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ONCE UPON A TIME 
IN CONNECTICUT 



BY 



CAKOLINE CLIFFORD NEWTON 




o 



BOSTON NTSW YORK CHICAGO 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 






:) r) 



COPYRIGHT, I916, BY CAROLINE CLIFFORD NEWTON 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



QTfie £tbtr£(itie If^mig 

CAMBRIDGE, . MASSACHUSETTS 
U . S . A ' 



APR 10 1916 
^CI,A428444 



THIS BOOK 

IS DEDICATED TO 

THE SCHOOL CHILDREN OP THE STATE 

BY THE 

CONNECTICUT SOCIETY 

OF THE 

COLONIAL DAMES 

OF AMERICA 



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 

THE Colonial Dames of Connecticut, under whose 
auspices this book is published, desire to express 
their indebtedness to Professor Charles M. Andrews, of 
Yale University, who generously offered to supervise 
the work on its historical side. They also gratefully ac- 
knowledge help from many friends in the preparation of 
the volume. Thanks are due to Mrs. Charles G. Morris 
for criticism of the manuscript and to Mr. George Dudley 
Seymour for advice in the selection of the illustrations. 
Courtesies have been extended by the officials of the 
New Haven Free Public Library, of the Connecticut 
Historical Society, and of the Library of Yale Uni- 
versity. 



INTRODUCTION 

IT is a pleasure to write a few words of introduction 
to this collection of stories dealing with the early 
history of Connecticut, a state that can justly point 
with pride to a past rich in features of life and gov- 
ernment that have been influential in the making of the 
nation. Yet the history of the colony was not dramatic, 
for its people lived quiet lives, Httle disturbed by quar- 
rels among themselves or by serious difficulties with 
the world outside. The land was never thickly settled ; 
few foreigners came into the colony; the towns were 
scattered rural communities largely independent of each 
other; the inhabitants, belonging to much the same 
class, were neither very rich nor very poor, their ac- 
tivities were mainly agricultural, and their habits of 
thought and ways of living were everywhere uniform 
throughout the colonial period. The colony was in a 
measure isolated, not only from England and English 
control, but also from the large colonial centers such as 
Boston and New York, through which it communicated 
with the older civilization. Connections with other col- 
onies were neither frequent nor important. Roads were 
poor, ferries dangerous, bridges few, and transportation 
even from town to town was difficult and slow. 



vi INTRODUCTION 

f The importance of Connecticut lay in the men that it 
nurtured and the forms of government that it estab- 
lished and preserved. Few institutions from the Old 
"World had root in its soil. In their town meetings the 
people looked after local affairs; and matters of larger 
import they managed by means of the general assembly 
to which the towns sent representatives. They made 
their own laws, which they administered in their own 
courts. Their rules of justice, though sometimes pe- 
culiar, were the same for all. They did what they could 
to educate their children, to uphold good morals, to help 
the poor, and to increase the prosperity of the colony. 
Though they could not entirely prevent England from 
interfering in their affairs, they succeeded in reducing 
her interference to a minimum and were well content 
to be let alone. Yet when called upon to furnish men in 
time of war, they did so generously and, in the main, 
promptly. They became a vigorous, strong, determined 
community, and though unprogressive in agriculture, 
they were enterprising in trade and commerce, and in 
the opening up of new opportunities prepared the way 
for the later career of a progressive, highly organized 
manufacturing state. To the larger colonial world they 
furnished men and ideas that, during the period of 
revolution and constitution-making, played prominent 
parts in shaping the future of the United States of 
America. 



INTRODUCTION vii 

If this little volume gives to the children of Connect- 
icut a truer appreciation of the early history of the 
state in which they live, its purpose will have been 
achieved. A knowledge of Connecticut's history, its 
men and the work they have accomplished, should 
arouse the devotion and loyalty of every Connecticut 
boy and girl to the state and its welfare; and that it 
shall do so is the hope of those by whom this work has 
been projected and under whose auspices it has been 
published. 

Chakles M. Andeews. 



O 



CONTENTS 

The House op Hope and the Chabtee Oak ... 1 

Two Indian Warriors 15 

A Harbor for Ships 30 

Three Judges 45 

The Fort on the River 59 

The Frogs op Windham 74 

Old Wolf Putnam 81 

The Bullet-Makers of Litchfield 94 

Newgate Prison 102 

The Dark Day Ill 

A French Camp in Connecticut 117 

Nathan Hale , 124 



o 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Wadsworth Hiding the Chartee . . • , , ,12*^ 

MlANTONOMO's MOKUMENT 26 

Medal Commemorating the Founding op New Haven . 34 '-'" 

The Judges' Cave on West Rock 54 •'^ 

The Site of Saybrook Fort 62 ^ 

The Wyoming Massacre 76*^ 

General Putnam . 92 

King George the Third 96 

The Ruins of Newgate Prison 104 '"^ 

An Old Connecticut Inn, 1790 114 ^ 

The Marquis of Lafayette 120' 

Nathan Hale . . , 136 ' 



o 



ONCE UPON A TIME IN 
CONNECTICUT 

THE HOUSE OF HOPE AND THE 
CHARTER OAK 

A GREAT oak tree fell in the city of Hartford on 
August 21, 1856. The night had been wild and 
stormy; in the early morning a violent wind twisted and 
broke the hollow trunk about six feet above the ground, 
and the old oak that had stood for centuries was over- 
thrown. 

All day long people came to look at it as it lay on the 
ground. Its wood was carefully preserved and souve- 
nirs were made from it: chairs, tables, boxes, picture- 
frames, wooden nutmegs, etc. One section of the trunk 
is to-day in the possession of the Connecticut Historical 
Society. Tradition says that this tree was standing, tall 
and vigorous, when the first English settlers reached 
Hartford and began to clear the land; that the Indians 
came to them then, as they were felling trees, and begged 
them to spare that one because it told them when to 
plant their corn. ""When its leaves are the size of a 
mouse's ears," they said, " then is the time to put the 
eeed in the ground." 



2 ONCE UPON A TIME IN CONNECTICUT 

At sunset, on the day when it fell, the bells of Hart- 
ford tolled and flags draped in mourning were displayed 
on the gnarled and broken trunk, for this tree was the 
Charter Oak, and its story is bound up with the story 
of the Connecticut Colony. 

About the year 1613, five little ships set sail from 
Holland on voyages for discovery and trade in the Kew 
World. They were the Little Fox, the Nightingale, the 
Tiger, and two called the Fortune. The Tiger was 
under the command of a bold sailor named Adriaen 
Block and he brought her across the ocean to New 
Netherland, which is now New York. There was then 
a small Dutch village of a few houses on Manhattan 
Island. 

"While she was anchored off the island, the Tiger 
took fire and burned. But Block was not discouraged. 
He set to work at once and built another boat — one of 
the first built in America. She was 40 feet, 6 inches 
long by 11 feet, 6 inches wide, and he called her the 
Restless. In the summer of 1614 he sailed her up the 
East River and out into Long Island Sound where no 
white man had ever been before. He named both the 
East River and the Sound " Hellegat," after a river in 
Holland, and a narrow passage in the East River is still 
known as " Hell-Gate." 

Block sailed along the low wooded shores of Con- 



THE HOUSE OF HOPE AND THE CHARTER OAK 3 

necticut, past the mouth of the Housatonic, which he 
named the " Kiver of the Ked Mountam," and re]3orted 
it to be "about a bowshot wide," and by and by he 
came to a much larger stream emptying into the Sound. 
This was the Connecticut, and Block turned and sailed 
up the river as far as the point where Hartford now 
stands. He noticed that the tide did not flow far into 
this river and that the water near its mouth was fresh, 
so he called it the " Fresh River." 

When the Dutch in Manhattan heard of this new 
country which he had discovered, they began a fur trade 
with the Indians who lived there. In June, 1633, they 
bought from the Indians a strip of land on the river, 
one Dutch mile in length by one third of a mile in width, 
and they paid for it with " one piece of duffel [that is, 
heavy cloth] twenty-seven ells long, six axes, six ket- 
tles, eighteen knives, one sword-blade, one pair of 
shears, some toys and a musket." On this land, which 
is now in the city of Hartford, the first block-house in 
Connecticut was built and was called the " House of 
Hope." Although two small cannon were mounted upon 
it the Dutch said the place should be a peaceful trad- 
ing-post only and free to all Indians who came in peace. 

Yery soon after this little Dutch fort of the House of 
Hope was finished. Lieutenant William Holmes, from 
the Plymouth Colony, sailed up the river, and he and 
his men carried with them on their boat a frame house 



4 ONCE UPON A TIME IN CONNECTICUT 

all ready to put together. The Dutch challenged the 
Plymouth boat as it passed their fort, but Holmes paid 
no attention. He had been told by the Governor of 
Plymouth to go up the river and he went, and at the 
mouth of the Farmington, where Windsor is to-day, he 
set up the first frame house in Connecticut and sur- 
rounded it with a palisade for protection. 

Other Englishmen from Massachusetts Bay, hearing 
of these new fertile lands and of friendly Indians and a 
profitable fur trade, came overland, making their way 
through the wilderness. By and by their numbers were 
so great that the Dutch were crowded out and driven 
away and Connecticut was settled by the English. 

One of the most interesting parties of settlers who 
came from Massachusetts to Hartford was " Mr. Hook- 
er's company." Thomas Hooker, the minister in Cam- 
bridge, led one hundred members of his church overland 
to new homes in Connecticut in June, 1636. These 
people had come from England a few years before, 
hoping to find religious and political freedom in Amer- 
ica, and, after a short stay in the Massachusetts Bay 
Colony, they decided to remove to Connecticut. Their 
journey was made in warm weather, under sunny skies, 
with birds singing in the green woods. They traveled 
slowly, for there were women and little children with 
them, old people too, and some who were sick. Mrs. 
Hooker was^carried all the way in a litter. They followed 



THE HOUSE OF HOPE AND THE CHARTER OAK 5 

a path toward the west which by that time had probably 
become a well-marked trail. Part of it, no doubt, led 
through deep forests. Sometimes they passed Indian 
villages. Sometimes they forded streams. They drove 
with them a herd of one hundred and sixty cattle, let- 
ting them graze by the way. They had wagons and 
tents, and at night they camped, made fires, and milked 
the cows. There were berries to be picked along the 
edges of the meadows and clear springs to drink from, 
and the two weeks' journey must have been one long 
picnic to the children. 

When " Hooker's company " arrived on the banks of 
the Connecticut Kiver, three little English settlements 
had already been made there. They were soon named 
Hartford, Windsor, and We(a)thersfield. These three set- 
tlements were the beginning of the Connecticut Colony. 

At first the people were under the government of 
Massachusetts because Massachusetts thought they 
were still within her borders. But before long it became 
necessary for them to organize a government of their 
OAvn. They had brought no patent, or charter, with them 
from England, and so, finding themselves alone in the 
wilderness, separated by many long miles of forests 
from Massachusetts Bay, they determined to arrange 
their own affairs without reference to any outside au- 
thority. They set up a government on May 1, 1637, and 
the next year, under the leadership of such men as 



6 ONCE UPON A TIME IN CONNECTICUT 

Thomas Hooker, John Haynes, who had once been 
Governor of Massachusetts Bay, and Roger Ludlow, 
who had had some legal trainmg, this government, made 
up of deputies from each of the three little settlements, 
drafted eleven " Fundamental Orders." These " Funda- 
mental Orders " were not a written constitution, but a 
series of laws very much like those of the colonies of 
Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay. There is a tradition 
that they were read to the people and adopted by them 
in the Hartford Meeting-House on January 14, 1689. 

Connecticut continued under this form of govern- 
ment, which she had decided upon for herself, for more 
than twenty years — until after the civil war in England 
was over. Then, when royalty was restored and Charles 
the Second became king, in 1660, the people feared that 
they might lose something of the independence they 
had learned to love and value, and they sent their gov- 
ernor, John Winthrop, to England to get from the king 
a charter to confirm their " privileges and liberties." 

Winthrop was a man who had had a university edu- 
cation in England and the advantages of travel on the 
continent of Europe. He had a good presence and 
courteous manners. Best of all, he had powerful friends 
at court. There is a story that in an audience with the 
king he returned to him a ring which the king's father, 
Charles the First, had given to Winthrop's grandfather, 
and that the king was so pleased with this that he was 



THE HOUSE OF HOPE AND THE CHARTER OAK 7 

willing to sign the charter Winthrop asked for. Whether 
this is true or not, the king did sign one of the most 
liberal charters granted to any colony in America. It 
gave the Connecticut people power to elect their own 
governor and to make their own laws. This is the fa- 
mous charter which is said to have been hidden later in 
the Charter Oak Tree. Two copies were made of it, 
and one of these Governor Winthrop sent home, Sep- 
tember, 1662, in an odd- shaped, leather-covered box. 
This box, which is lined with sheets from an old history 
of King Charles the First and has a compartment at 
one side that once held the royal seal of green wax at- 
tached to the charter, can be seen to-day in the rooms 
of the Connecticut Historical Society. 

When the people understood what a good charter 
they had received they were greatly pleased. The rec- 
ord of the General Assembly for October 9, 1662, says, 
" The Patent or Charter was this day publickly read to 
the Freemen [that is, the voters] and declared to belong 
to them and to their successors "; and October 29 was ap- 
pointed a Thanksgiving Day " particularly for the great 
success God hath given to the endeavors of our Hon- 
ored Governor in obtaining our Charter of His Majesty 
our Sovereign." Samuel Wyllys, in front of whose home 
stood the oak tree which was afterward to become 
known as the " Charter Oak," was appointed one of the 
first keepers of the charter. 



8 ONCE UPON A TIME IN CONNECTICUT 

For about a quarter of a century the government of 
Connecticut was carried on under the charter. Then 
King Charles the Second died, and his brother, the Duke 
of York, became king. The advisers of the new king, 
James the Second, wished to unite all the little scattered 
New England colonies under one strong government 
which should be able to resist not only Indian attacks, 
but also attacks from the French on the north. So in 
1686, James sent over Sir Edmund Andros, who had 
once been Governor of New York, with a commission 
as Governor of the Dominion of New England. It was 
the duty of Andros to take over the separate govern- 
ments of the different colonies and to demand the sur- 
render of their charters. 

But the people of New England did not like the new 
policy. Each colony wished to preserve its independence ; 
each wished to be left entirely free to manage its own 
affairs, j^et each expected help from England against 
its enemies. England, on the other hand, felt that the 
isolation of these small colonies, their jealousy of one 
another and their frequent quarrels, were a source of 
weakness, and that a single strong government was 
necessary to preserve order, to encourage trade, and to 
secure defense. The plan of union, however, as has been 
said, was greatly disliked by the colonies, and Connec- 
ticut sent a petition to the king praying that she might 
keep her privileges and her charter, and meanwhile she 



THE HOUSE OF HOPE AND THE CHARTER OAK 9 

put off submission to the new governor as long as pos- 
sible. 

At last, however, Sir Edmund Andros wrote from 
Boston to Governor Treat of Connecticut that he 
would be " at Hartford about the end of the next week." 
This was on October 22, 1G87. He left Boston on the 
26th. A record written at that time says, " His Excel- 
lency with sundry of the Council, Justices and other 
gentlemen, four Blue Coats, two trumpeters, 15 or 20 
Red Coats, with small Guns and short Lances in the 
tops of them, set forth in order to go to Connecticut to 
assume the government of that place." He reached 
Hartford on the 31st, having crossed the Connecticut 
River by the ferry at Wethersfield. " The trooj) of 
horse of that county conducted him honorably from the 
ferry through Wethersfield up to Hartford, where the 
train-bands of divers towns united to pay their respects 
at his coming " and to escort him to the tavern. 

Governor Andros had come from Norwich since 
morning, a forty-mile ride over rough roads and across 
streams without bridges or ferries, and it was late 
when he arrived. The fall days were short and prob- 
ably candles were already lighted in the court cham- 
ber where the Assembly was in session. The Con- 
necticut magistrates knew something of Sir Edmund 
Andros. Twelve years before, while he was Governor 
of New York, he had appeared at Saybrook and de- 



10 ONCE UPON A TIME IN CONNECTICUT 

manded the surrender of the fort and town by order of 
the Duke of York who claimed part of Connecticut 
under his patent. The claim was not made good, for 
Captain Bull, who commanded at Saybrook, raised the 
kino-'s colors over the fort and forbade the readino- of 
the duke's patent, and Andros, not wishing to use force 
and pleased with this bold action although it was 
against himself, sailed away, ^ow, however, the Duke 
of York had become King of England with a new pol- 
icy for the colonies, and Andros was obeying the king's 
orders. 

He was a soldier who had served with distinction in 
the army and had held responsible positions. He was 
also a man used to courts as well as to camps, for as a 
boy he had been a page in the king's household and 
later was attached to the king's service. He must have 
presented a contrast in appearance and manner to the 
Connecticut magistrates w^ho so anxiously awaited his 
coming. 

"When he entered the room he took the governor's 
seat and ordered the king's commission to be read, which 
appointed him governor of all New England. He then 
declared the old government to be dissolved and asked 
that the charter under which it had been carried on 
should be given up to him. The Assembly was obliged 
to recognize his authority and to accept the new gov- 
ernment; but a story of that famous meeting has been 



THE HOUSE OF HOPE AND THE CHARTER OAK 11 

handed down in Connecticut from one generation to 
another telling how the people contrived to keep their 
charter, the document they loved because it guaranteed 
their freedom. 

" The Assembly sat late that night," says the story, 
and the debate was long. When Sir Edmund Andros 
asked for the charter it was brought in and laid on the 
table. Then Robert Treat, who had been Governor of 
Connecticut, rose and began a speech. He told of the 
great expense and hardship the people had endured in 
planting the colony, of the blood and treasure they had 
expended in defending it against " savages and foreign- 
ers," and said it was " like giving up life now, to sur- 
render the patent and privileges so dearly bought and 
so long enjoyed." Suddenly, while he was speaking, all 
the candles went out. There was a moment of confusion; 
then some one brought a tinder-box and flint and the 
candles were relighted. The room was unchanged; the 
same number of people were there; but the table where 
the charter had lain was empty, for in that moment of 
darkness the charter had disappeared. 

No one knew who had taken it. Ko one could find it. 
No one saw the candles blown out. Was it done on 
purpose, or did a door or a window fly open and a gust 
of the night wind put them out ? It chanced that the 
night was Allhallowe'en, when the old tales say that 
the witches and fairies and imps are abroad and busy. 



12 ONCE UPON A TIME IN CONNECTICUT 

Were any of them busy that night with Connecticut's 
charter? 

" Two men in the room, John Talcott and IS'athaniel 
Stanley, took the charter when the lights were out." So 
said Governor Roger Wolcott long afterward. He was 
a boy nine years old at the time and had often heard 
the story. But these two men never left the room ; they 
were members of the Assembly; they could not carry 
off the charter. However, Major Talcott had a son-in- 
law, Joseph Wadsworth, and he was waiting outside, 
— so says another story. Wadsworth was young and 
daring. The charter was passed out to him and he hid 
it under his cloak and made his way swiftly through 
the crowd that had gathered around the tavern and 
through the dim, deserted streets beyond, to where an 
old oak tree grew in front of the Wyllys house. This 
tree had a hollow in its trunk and "Wadsworth slipped 
the charter into this safe hiding-place and left it there. 
Houses might be searched, but no one would think of 
looking for a missing paper in the hidden heart of a 
hollow oak. And because the old tree proved a good 
guardian and gave shelter in a time of trouble to Con- 
necticut's charter it was known and honored later as 
the Charter Oak. 

"We are not told what was said or done in the court 
chamber after the charter disappeared. The stories of 
that night are full of mystery and contradiction. Per- 



THE HOUSE OF HOPE AND THE CHARTER OAK 13 

haps, after all, no very serious search was made for it. 
Perhaps its loss brought about a compromise between 
the two parties. For Governor Andros had already 
gained his object; he had taken over the government 
of Connecticut, and the people had saved their pride 
because they had not surrendered their charter. 

The charter lay hidden for two years; not all that 
time in the oak tree, of course, but in some other safe 
place. One tradition says it was kept for a while in Guil- 
ford in the house of Andrew Leete. At the end of two 
years there was a revolution in England, and William 
and Mary came to the English throne. Then the char- 
ter was taken out of its hiding-place — wherever that 
was — and government was at once resumed imder the 
same old patent which had disappeared so mysteriously 
on that famous Allhallowe'en night. 

In the Memorial Hall of the State Library at Hart- 
ford, under a glass shield, in a fireproof compartment 
built into the end wall of the room, there hangs to-day 
one of the two original copies of the Connecticut Char- 
ter.; It is in a good state of preservation, its lettering is 
clear and distinct, and so is the portrait engraved upon 
it of King Charles the Second who gave it to Governor 
John Winthrop. A part of its present frame is made 
from the wood of the Charter Oak. The other copy, 
that is, what remains of it, can be seen in the box which 
is owned by the Historical Society. 



14 ONCE UPON A TIME IN CONNECTICUT 

When, after the Eevolutionary War, the Colony of 
Connecticut became the State of Connecticut, the char- 
ter of the colony was adopted without alteration as the 
State Constitution. N^o change was made in it until 
1818. 

The old oak tree, known to Indian legend and better 
known in Connecticut's story, lived, honored and pro- 
tected, until its fall in the great storm of August 21, 
1856. 

REFERENCES 

1. Trumbull, Benjamin. History of Connecticut. Maltby Gold- 
smith & Co. New Haven, 1818. 

2. Trumbull, J. Hammond (editor). Ilemorial History of Hart- 
ford County. E. L. Osgood. Boston, 1886. 

3. Andrews, Charles M. " The River Towns of Connecticut," in 
Johns Hopkins University Studies, vn, 1-3, September, 1889. 
Baltimore, 1889. 

4. Love, Wm. De Loss. The Colonial History of Hartford. Hart- 
ford, 1914. 

5. Love, Wm. De Loss. " Hartford, the Keeper of Connecticut's 
Charter," in Hartford in History., Willis J. Twitchell (editor). 
Hartford, 1899. 

6. Bates, Albert C. Article on " Charter Oak" in EncyclopcBdia 
Americana. 

7. Iloadly, Charles J. The Hiding of the Charter. Case, Lock- 
wood & Braiuard. Hartford, 1900. 



TWO mDIAI^ WAREIORS 

THE two Indian chiefs of whom we hear most in the 
early history of Connecticut were Uncas, sachem 
of the Mohegans, and Miantonomo, sachem of the Nar- 
ragansetts. A great Indian battle called the " Battle of 
the Plain " took place once, near Norwich, between 
these rival tribes led by these two rival chieftains. 

The Mohegans were a part of the Pequot tribe, and 
the Pequots, or " Gray Foxes," were the fiercest, most 
cruel, and warlike of all the Indians who roamed through 
the forests of Connecticut before the English came. 
The white settlers soon had trouble with them, and when 
the Pequot War, which was a war between the settlers 
and the Indians, began, in 1687, Uncas came with 
some of his Mohegan warriors and offered to guide 
the English troops through the woods to the Pequot 
fort. 

Now Uncas was himself a Pequot by birth and be- 
longed to the royal family, and it seems strange that he 
should not take part with his own people. But not long 
before this he had rebelled against the chief sachem, 
Sassacus, and had tried to make himself independent. 
" He grew proud and treacherous to the Pequot sachem," 
says the old chronicle, " and the Pequot sachem was 



16 ONCE UPON A TIME IN CONNECTICUT 

very angry and sent up some soldiers and drove him out 
of his country." Afterward, when " he humbled himself 
to the Pequot sachem, he received permission to live in 
his own country again." But he was restless and dissat- 
isfied. He was said to be of great size and very strong; 
he was brave too, and had a good deal of influence 
among the Indians. The settlers needed his help, yet 
they were half afraid to trust him, knowing that he would 
be *' faithful to them as the jackal is faithful to the lion, 
not because it loves the lion, but because it gains some- 
thing by remaining in his company." Before he would 
accept him as a guide. Lieutenant Lion Gardiner, com- 
mander of the fort at Saybrook, said to him, " You say 
you will help Captain Mason, but I will first see it; 
therefore send twenty men to Bass River, for there 
went six Indians there in a canoe, fetch them, dead or 
alive; and you shall go with Mason or else you shall 
not." 

Uncas went off with his men and found these Indians. 
He killed four of them and brought back another as a 
prisoner, and the colonists, feeling more certain of his 
fidelity, took him with them on their expedition. 

Miantonomo, the N^arragansett sachem, did not go 
himself, but he sent one hundred of his warriors, for he, 
too, hated the Pequots, who had lately overrun the coun- 
try and made themselves a terror to their neighbors. 
The IN^arragansetts lived near them. Just over the Rhode 



TWO INDIAN WARRIORS 17 

Island border. They were a larger tribe than the Pe- 
quots and more peaceful and civilized, and their chief, 
Miantonomo, was friendly to the English settlers and 
had been generous in his dealings with them. He and 
his uncle Canonicus, who was at this time an old man 
over eighty, governed the Narragansetts together and 
were on the best of terms with each other. " The old 
sachem will not be offended at what the young sachem 
doth," says the English record, " and the young sachem 
will not do what he conceives will displease his uncle." 
The Pequot War was soon over, for the bows and 
arrows of the Indians had no chance against the guns 
of the English. Most of the Pequot warriors were killed, 
their fort and wigwams were burned, and many of their 
women and children perished in the flames. It is a piti- 
ful story, because the settlers felt it necessary for their 
own safety to put an end to the Pequot tribe. The few 
poor Pequots who escaped this terrible destruction were 
scattered among other tribes. The iJ^Tarragansetts took 
some, but more went to the Mohegans because they 
were related to them. In this way the tribe of the Mo- 
hegans grew larger and stronger and Uncas became an 
important chief. He showed great skill in building up 
his tribe and he remained faithful to the English all 
through his life, while they, on their side, protected him 
as a reward for his services. As his power increased, 
however, his jealous and quarrelsome disposition showed 



18 ONCE UPON A TIME IN CONNECTICUT 

itself more plainly, and the Indians complained that 
" the English had made him high " and that he robbed 
and oppressed them. When the colonists demanded 
that he should give up to them any fugitive Pequots 
who had murdered w^hite settlers, Uncas put off com- 
plying on one pretext or another, because he did not 
wish to weaken his tribe, which was still much smaller 
than that of the Karragansetts. 

The year after the war he went to Boston with thirty- 
seven of his warriors carrying a present of wampum 
for the governor. But the governor would not accept 
the present until Uncas had given satisfaction about the 
Pequots he was hiding. Uncas seemed " much dejected" 
by this reception, and at first he denied that he had any 
Pequots, but after two days he admitted the fact and 
promised to do whatever the council demanded. Half an 
hour later he came to the governor and made the follow- 
ing speech. Laying his hand on his breast, he said: — 

" This heart is not mine, but yours ; I have no men, 
they are all yours; command me any difficult thing, I 
will do it; I will not believe any Indian's word against 
the English. If any man shall kill an Englishman I will 
put him to death were he never so dear to me." 

The governor in response " gave him a fair red coat, 
and defrayed his and his men's diet, and gave them corn 
to relieve them homeward, and a letter of protection to 
all men, and he departed very joyful." 



TWO INDIAN WARRIORS 19 

Uncas had now become a dangerous rival of Mianto- 
nomo, and the jealousy between them soon grew so 
great that it threatened to break out in open war. In 
1638 they were both called to Hartford by the Con- 
necticut authorities to settle the differences between 
them. 

Miantonomo obeyed this summons at once and set out 
with a great company, " a guard of upwards of one hun- 
dred and fifty men and many sachems and his wife and 
children," and traveled through the forests that lay be- 
tween the villages of the Narragansetts in Rhode Island 
and the English settlements in the Connecticut valley. 
On the way he heard that the Mohegans had planned to 
attack him, that they had laid an ambush for him, and 
had threatened to " boil him in a kettle." Some Indians 
of a friendly tribe met him and told him that a band of 
Mohegans had fallen upon them and robbed them two 
days before, and had destroyed twenty-three fields of 
their corn. Miantonomo had already come about half- 
way, and, after holding a council with his chiefs, he de- 
cided to push on. "No man shall turn back," he said; 
" we will all rather die." 

He reached Hartford in safety, but Uncas Was not 
there. Uncas had sent word by a messenger that he was 
lame and could not come. The Governor of Connecticut 
" observed that it was a lame excuse and sent for him to 
come without delay." So Uncas decided that it was safer 



20 ONCE UPON A TIME IN CONNECTICUT 

for him, on the whole, to get well quickly and to go to 
Hartford. 

In the council that followed, each chieftain stated his 
grievances and made complaint against the other, and 
the English tried to reconcile them. At last a treaty of 
peace was signed, and then Miantonomo stepped for- 
ward and held out his hand to Uncas and invited him to 
a feast. But Uncas would not eat with him, and the two 
chiefs parted no better friends than before. 

Not long after this, Miantonomo was accused of try- 
ing to unite all the Indian tribes against the English set- 
tlers. It was said that he had made a speech to the Long 
Island Indians in these words: — 

" Brothers, we must be one as the English are, or we 
shall soon all be destroyed. You know our fathers had 
plenty of deer and skins, and our plains were full of deer 
and of turkeys, and our coves and rivers were full of 
fish. But, brothers, since these English have seized upon 
our country, they cut down the grass with scythes, and 
the trees with axes. Their cows and horses eat up the 
grass, and their hogs spoil our beds of clams; and finally 
we shall starve to death. Therefore, I beseech you to act 
like men. All the sachems both to the east and west have 
joined with us and we are resolved to fall upon them." 

The English were much alarmed on hearing this. It 
was quite true that the Indians had sold their lands with- 
out realizing that the settlers would use them for any- 



TWO INDIAN WARRIORS 21 

thing else than for hunting grounds and for fishing 
places, as they themselves had done. They could not 
know that the forests would be cleared, that farms 
would spread over the countryside, and towns grow up 
along the river courses, and they themselves be driven 
farther and farther back into the wilderness. But Mian- 
tonomo denied that he had planned a united attack on 
the settlements. He told the messengers who were sent 
to him from Boston that all such reports came from 
Uncas, and he agreed to go to Boston and appear before 
the court of Massachusetts. He said, too, that he would 
like to meet his accusers face to face and prove their 
treachery. 

Miantonomo was a tall, fine-looking chief with serious 
and stately manners, and he made a favorable impression 
in Boston on the magistrates who were not very well 
disposed toward him. " "When he came in, the court was 
assembled and he was set down at the lower end of the 
table over against the governor." A Pequot interpreter 
was given him. Now, in his own country he had refused 
to make use of a Pequot as interpreter because he was 
not on good terms with that tribe and could not trust 
them, but here, '* surrounded by armed men," he could 
not help himself. He protested, however, saying gravely, 
" When your people come to me, they are permitted to 
use their own fashions and I expect the same liberty 
when I come to you." 



22 ONCE UPON A TIME IN CONNECTICUT 

The sessions of the court lasted for two days, and 
every one was astonished at the wisdom and dignity of 
the great sachem of the Narragansetts. He answered 
all the questions put to him deliberately, and would not 
speak at all unless some of his councilors were present as 
witnesses. At meal-times, when a separate table was set 
for him, he was not pleased and refused to eat until some 
food was brought to him from the governor's table. In 
the end he convinced the council of his innocence and 
he returned in peace to his own country. 

Meanwhile, Uncas, who was both feared and hated for 
his sudden rise to power, had several narrow escapes 
from death. One of the captured Pequots in his own 
tribe shot an arrow at him and wounded him in the arm. 
Uncas complained to the English that Miantonomo had 
engaged this Pequot to kill him, and Miantonomo re- 
torted that Uncas had cut his own arm with a flint to 
make it appear that he had been wounded, and no one 
knew where the truth lay. Soon after this an attempt 
was made to poison him. Then, at last, one day as he 
was paddling down the Connecticut Kiver in a canoe, 
some Indians who were friends of the Narragan setts 
sent a shower of arrows at him from the bank. He at 
once made a raid into their country, killed seven or eight 
of their warriors, burned their wigwams and carried off 
the booty. 

This brought matters to a climax, for their chief, Se- 



TWO INDIAN WARRIORS 23 

qiiassen, was related to Miantonomo and Miantonomo 
took up his quarrel. The trouble, which had so long been 
smouldering between the Mohegans and the IS^arragan- 
setts, broke out in earnest. Miantonomo collected all the 
Narragansett warriors and led them swiftly and secretly 
through the forests toward the land of the Mohegans, 
which lay along the banks of the Pequot, or Thames, 
River. He hoped in this way to fall upon Uncas while 
he was unprepared. 

But Uncas was on his guard. His watchmen on the 
hills caught sight of the Narragansetts as they came 
out of the woods by the fords of the Shetucket River, 
— above the present city of IS^orwich. Uncas had a fort 
five miles below on the Pequot River, which was his 
headquarters, and the old story says : — 

" Being warned by his spies of the approach of the 
Narragansetts toward his seat, Uncas called his war- 
riors together, stout, hard men, light of foot and skilled 
in the use of bow and arrow, and upon a conference he 
told them that it would not do to let the Narragansetts 
come to their town, but that they must go and meet 
them. Accordingly they marched about three miles, and 
on a large plain the armies met, and both halted "Within 
bowshot. A parley was sounded, and Uncas proposed a 
conference with the I^arragansett sachem, who agreed. 
And being met, Uncas saith to his enemy words to this 
effect : — 



24 ONCE UPON A TIME IN CONNECTICUT 

" * You have a number of brave men and so have I. 
It is a pity tliat such brave men should be killed for a 
quarrel between you and me. Only come like a man, as 
you pretend to be, and we will fight it out. If you kill 
me, my men shall be yours, but if I kill you, your men 
shall be mine.' 

" Upon which the I^arragansett sachem replied, 
*' * My men came to fight and they shall fight.' " 
!N'ow, Uncas knew well that his army, being much 
smaller, had no chance against the army of the Nar- 
ragansetts in a fair fight, and before he met the Narra- 
gansett sachem he had planned a stratagem with his 
own men. 

As soon as Miantonomo had spoken Uncas threw 
himself face down on the ground and his men drew 
their bows and shot their arrows over his head and 
rushed " like lions" upon their astonished enemies. The 
Narragansetts broke in terror and confusion. They did 
not stop to fight, but turned and fled panic-stricken, 
through woods and swamps and over rocks and hills, 
by the way they had come, back to the river fords. The 
Mohegans pursued them, killing a number of them and 
wounding more. They drove them headlong, like sheep, 
before them, and the pursuit lasted for five or six miles. 
Some of the Narragansetts lost their way and came 
upon the Yantic River near its falls and were driven 
over the steep rockson the banks and drowned in the 



TWO INDIAN WARRIORS 26 

water. Others were taken prisoners. "Long afterwards, 
some old Mohegans were heard to boast of having found 
a poor l^arragansett struggling and panting in a thicket 
that bordered the river, and so frantic with fear and 
excitement as to suppose himself in the water and ac- 
tually attempting to swim among the bushes." 

Miantonomo was strong and a swift runner, but that 
day he wore for protection a coat of mail which an Eng- 
lishman had given him and the heavy garment impeded 
his flight. The Mohegans recognized him by it and fol- 
lowed him eagerly. He kept his distance until he had 
nearly reached the river, but there, " the foremost of 
Uncas's men got ahead of him." They threw themselves 
against him and prevented his escape. They did not 
kill him or try to take him prisoner, but they ran beside 
him until Uncas came up, when they dropped back and 
gave their chieftain the " opportunity to take him." 

" At a place since called ' Sachem's Plain,' Uncas 
took him by the shoulder and Miantonomo sat down, 
knowing Uncas. Uncas then gave a whoop and his men 
returned to him." But Miantonomo sat silent. 

At last Uncas spoke to him and said, "If you had 
taken me I would have besought you for my life." 

Now it was against the Indian's code of honor to ask 
for mercy. An Indian brave must never complain, no 
matter how hard his fate. If he were put to torture, if 
he were even burned at the stake, he must let no sound 



26 ONCE UPON A TIME IN CONNECTICUT 

of pain escape him. He might boast of his own exploits 
and tell how many of his enemies he had killed, but he 
must never admit defeat. Courage and endurance were 
the great Indian virtues. Therefore Miantonomo made 
no reply to the taunts of Uncas and his men; he kept 
silence, as befitted a great sachem and a brave warrior, 
" choosing rather to die than to make supplication for 
his life." 

Uncas had the right, according to Indian custom, to 
put his prisoner to death at once, but he had agreed to 
consult the English in all important matters, so he car- 
ried him to Hartford. This was late in the summer of 
1643. In September the commissioners of the United 
Colonies met in Boston and the case of Miantonomo 
came before them. The commissioners were afraid to 
take the responsibility of setting the IN'arragansett 
sachem free, because they had promised to protect 
Uncas and they felt that Uncas would not be safe while 
Miantonomo lived, yet they had no reason to put him 
to death. At last, after long deliberation, they decided 
that he should be given back to Uncas and that Uncas, 
if he chose, might put him to death ; but he must do it 
in his own land, not in the English settlements, and 
there must be no torture. 

So Uncas came to Hartford " with some considerable 
number of his best and trustiest men," and having re- 
ceived his prisoner, he set out with him on the fatal 



TWO INDIAN WARRIORS 27 

journey. The English sent two of their own men with 
him to see that the sentence was duly executed. They 
went through the forests until they had passed the Eng- 
lish boundaries and had come upon land that belonged 
to the Mohegans, and, therein the wilderness, the brother 
of Uncas, who walked behind Miantonomo, lifted his 
hatchet and silently drove it through the captive chief- 
tain's head. 

On Sachem's Plain a great heap of stones soon marked 
the spot where Miantonomo had been overtaken, for 
each Mohegan warrior who passed the place cast a stone 
on the pile with a shout of triumph, and each Narra- 
gansett added lo it with cries of sorrow and lamenta- 
tion for the loss of a noble leader. In after years the 
stones disappeared, and a monument was erected on the 
spot in 1841, in honor of the Narragansett sachem. It 
is a large, square block of granite with the name and 
the date carved upon it, " MIANTONOMO, 1643." It 
can be seen to-day in Greeneville, two miles from Nor- 
wich. 

Uncas lived on for many years and was a very old 
man before he died; "old and wicked and wilful," one 
account describes him. He quarreled with his neigh- 
bors and gave much trouble to his friends, the English. 
The Narragansetts attacked him after the death of 
Miantonomo, to avenge the death of their chief, and 
they drove him into one of his forts on the Pequot 



28 ONCE UPON A TIME IN CONNECTICUT 

River. The colonists had helped him to build this fort 
on a point of land running out into the water, and it 
was too strong for the Indians to take it by assault. 
They took possession of the Mohegan's canoes, how- 
ever, and they sat down patiently before the fort, on 
the land side, to starve out Uncas and his warriors. 

But the story says that one night Uncas sent out a 
swift runner, who got safely past his enemies and car- 
ried the news to the English. Thomas Leffingwell, one 
of the settlers at Saybrook, " an enterprizing, bold man, 
loaded a canoe with beef, corn, and peas, and under 
cover of night paddled from Saybrook " around into the 
mouth of the Thames, or Pequot, River and succeeded in 
getting the provisions into the fort without the knowl- 
edge of the Narragansetts. The next morning there was 
great rejoicing among the Mohegans and they lifted a 
large piece of beef on a pole to show the besiegers that 
they had plenty to eat. The Narragansetts, fmding that 
the English had once more come to the rescue of Uncas, 
gave up the siege in despair and melted away into the 
forest. 

There is an old legend which says that each night 
while he was waiting for relief, Uncas himself secretly 
left the fort and crept along through the shadows on 
the river-bank until he came to a ledge of rocks from 
which he could look down the stream ; that he sat there 
stern and motionless until morning watching and hop- 



TWO INDIAN WARRIORS 29 

ing for help from the strange, new owners of the lands 
which had belonged to his fathers. These rocks after- 
ward went by the name of " Uncas's Chair." 

Uncas was buried in the royal burying-ground of the 
Mohegans near the falls of the Yantic River. His mon- 
ument is there now in the heart of the city of Norwich. 

REFERENCES 

1. DeForest, John W. History of the Indians of Connecticut. 
J. W. Hammersley. Hartford, 1853. 

2. Drake, Samuel G. Book of the Indians. Boston, 1845. 

3. Caulkins, Frances M. History of Norwich. Hartford, 1874. 

4. Sylvester, Herbert Milton. Indian Wars of New England. W. 
B. Clarke Co. Boston, 1910. 

5. Winthrop, John. History of New England. Edited by James 
Savage. Boston, 1825. 



A HARBOR FOR SHIPS 

IT hath a fair river, fit for harboring of ships, and 
abounds with rich and goodly meadows." This de- 
scription of New Haven, or Quinnipiac, as the Indians 
called it, was brought back to Boston in the summer of 
1637, after the Pequot War, by some of the English 
soldiers who had pursued the flying Pequots into that 
part of Connecticut and had noticed the good harbor 
of New Haven as they passed. 

The report sounded so pleasant and so satisfactory in 
the ears of a company of London merchants, who, with 
their families and their fortunes, had recently come to 
New England and were looking about for a suitable 
spot in which to settle, that they decided to visit this 
place and judge of it for themselves. 

These people, about two hundred and fifty in number, 
had arrived in Boston in June of that same year, after 
a voyage of two months. Of course in the small ships 
of those days there must have been many discomforts, 
even in a pleasant season, and no doubt some of the 
people were seasick. An old record of that time says, 
"We fetched out the children and others that lay groan- 
ing in the cabins, and having stretched a rope from the 
steerage to the mainmast, made them stand some on one 



A HARBOR FOR SHIPS 81 

side and some on the other and sway it up and down 
till they were warm. By this means they soon grew well 
and merry. . . . When the ship heaved and set more 
than usual a few were sick, but of these such as came 
upon deck and bestirred themselves were presently well 
again, therefore our captain set our children and young 
men to some harmless exercises, in which the seamen 
were very active and did our people much good, though 
they would sometimes play the wags with them." When 
at last the Hector dropped anchor in Boston Harbor, 
and " there came a smell off the shore like the smell of 
a garden," her passengers must have been glad that the 
long voyage was over. 

The two leaders of the company were Theophilus 
Eaton, a successful shipping merchant of London, a man 
of affairs and of great personal dignity and kindliness, 
and his friend. Reverend John Davenport, a London cler- 
gyman, who, like many other Puritan ministers of those 
days, had been obliged to leave England on account of 
his religious opinions. These two men had been school- 
boys together in the town of Coventry, they had been 
associated later in London, they came together to Amer- 
ica, and they remained friends to the end of their lives. 

As many of their party were merchants, and not 
farmers like a large number of the settlers on the Con- 
necticut River at Hartford, it was important to select a 
place for their colony which would be convenient for 



32 ONCE UPON A TIME IN CONNECTICUT 

trade and where there was a good harbor for the com- 
merce they hoped to establish. For this reason the re- 
port of Quinnipiac interested them, and in September 
several members of the company went to Quinnipiac 
and liked it so well that seven men were left there 
through the winter to prepare for the coming of the 
rest in the spring. In April the whole number removed 
there from Boston. 

The people of Massachusetts Bay were sorry to have 
them go. They would have been glad to have this rich 
and influential company join their colony, but these new 
settlers wished to found a colony of their own in which 
they could carry out their own ideas of what a model 
state should be, both in civil and religious matters. They 
took ship, therefore, from Boston for Quinnipiac, carry- 
ing all their goods and provisions with them. The expe- 
dition was well fitted out and all its details had been 
carefully planned before they left England. Friends al- 
ready in the colonies had written offering suggestions: 
" Bring good store of clothes and bedding with you ; 
bring paper and linseed oil for your windows, with cot- 
ton yarn for your lamps." 

As they sailed into Quinnipiac Harbor they saw for 
the first time the two great cliffs, the East and "West 
Rocks, called by the Dutch " the Red Hills," which still 
stand like guardians, one on each side of the present 
city of New Haven. On the level plain between them, 



A HARBOR FOR SHIPS 33 

which is watered by several small streams, they deter- 
mined to build their town and to place it at the head of 
the beautiful harbor. 

They made large and generous plans for it. They laid 
it out in regular squares and set aside a great open space 
in the center for a market-place. This is the New Haven 
Green, which exists to-day just as John Brockett, the 
surveyor, laid it out in 1638. It is still the largest public 
square in the heart of any city in the United States. In 
the middle of the Green they built the first " meeting- 
house." It was fifty feet square, made of rough timbers, 
with a small tower on top where the drummer stood on 
Sundays to " drum " the people to church ; for at first 
there were no bells. Each person had a seat carefully 
assigned to him, or her, m the meeting-house. Some- 
times the boys sat with the soldiers near the door. We 
read later in the records that at one time the children in 
the galleries were so restless during the long sermons, 
that " tithing-men " were appointed "to take a stick or 
wand and smite such as are of uncomely behavior in the 
meeting and acquaint their parents." On week-days the 
children went to school in a schoolhouse which was built 
on the Green. 

The town of N^ew Haven was soon noted for its large 
and fine houses, Eaton's having nineteen fireplaces ac- 
cording to tradition, and Davenport's, thirteen. But at 
first any kind of shelter was used for protection. The 



34 ONCE UPON A TIME IN CONNECTICUT 

people met under an oak tree for service on the first 
Sunday after landing and Reverend John Davenport 
preached a sermon to them on the " Temptation of the 
'Wilderness," so it is said. During the first winter some 
of them slept in cellars dug out in the banks of one of 
the creeks and covered with earth. A boy named Michael 
"Wiggles worth, who came to New Haven with his par- 
ents in October, 1638, when he was nine years old, lived 
in one of these cellars. When he grew up he wrote his 
autobiography and in it he says, "I remember that one 
great rain brake in upon us and drenched me so in my 
bed, being asleep, that I fell sick upon it, but the Lord 
in mercy spared my life and restored my health." 

When the settlers at Quinnipiac, or New Haven, as it 
was soon called, had been there a little more than a year, 
they met in Robert Newman's barn " to consult about 
settling civil government " and also about establishing 
a church. Up to this time they had lived under what 
was known as the " Plantation Covenant," which was 
a simple agreement among themselves that they would 
all " be ordered by those rules which the Scripture holds 
forth." At this meeting on June 4, 1639, they decided 
that they would continue to accept the Bible as a code 
of laws, and that only church members should hold office 
or have the right to vote for magistrates. They did this 
under the direction of John Davenport, who in one of 
his writings had described this colony as " a new Plan- 





Medal Commemorating the Two Hundredth Anniversary 
OF THE Founding of New Haven 



A HARBOR FOR SHIPS 35 

tation whose design is religion." This agreement, made 
in Kobert I^ewman's barn, was known as the " Fmida- 
mental Agreement." Twelve men were appointed on that 
day who chose seven from among themselves to found 
a church. These seven men were called the " Seven 
Pillars." On August 22, the " Seven Pillars " met and 
estabhshed a church, and on the 25th of October they 
met again and set up the civil government. 

Like the Connecticut Colony, the ISTew Haven Colony 
in setting up its government made no reference to any 
authority beyond itself; the people elected their own 
magistrates and made their own laws. But the 'New 
Haven Colony was unlike Connecticut in one important 
respect. In New Haven no man could vote or hold a 
place in the government unless he was a church mem- 
ber. This led later to much discontent among some of 
the people, and was one reason, among others, for the 
failure of New Haven as a separate colony and for its 
beng absorbed, twenty-five years afterward, — in 1664, 
— into the larger and more liberal Connecticut Colony. 

Meanwhile, even before the government was organ- 
ized, the merchants and shippers of the company had 
bought or built boats and had begun to trade along the 
coasts to the north and to the south. During the first 
winter while some of the people, like the family of 
Michael WigglesAvorth, were still living in cellars dug 
in the river-banks, Master George Lamberton was sail- 



36 ONCE UPON A TIME IN CONNECTICUT 

ing in his sloop, the Cock, on a trading voyage to Vir- 
ginia. Other 'New Haven ships soon established com- 
mercial relations with Boston and New Amsterdam, with 
Delaware, where beaver skins could be obtained in 
abundance, with Virginia, whose great staple was to- 
bacco, and with other plantations still farther away, such 
as Barbados in the "West Indies, where sugar was the 
most important article of exchange. IN'ow and then we 
hear of a Kew Haven ship in strange and foreign parts 
of the world. 

There was one which set out in December, 1642, for 
the Canary Islands, laden with clapboards, and fell in 
with pirates near the Island of Palma, one of the Cana- 
ries. A Turkish pirate ship of three hundred tons with 
two hundred men on board and twenty-six guns, at- 
tacked this small New Haven ship of one hundred and 
eighty tons, which had only seven guns fit for use and 
twenty men armed with rusty muskets. The fight lasted 
for three hours, and Captain Carman, the master of the 
New Haven ship, and his men succeeded in killing a 
good many Turks in spite of being taken at a disadvan- 
tage. But at last the pirates put their ship alongside and 
sent one hundred men on board the New Haven ship. 
When, however, they found that their captain was shot 
and the rudder of their ship broken, the pirates hauled 
down their flag and drew off so quickly that they left 
fifty of their men behind. " Then the master [Captain 



A HARBOR FOR SHIPS 37 

Carman] and some of his men came up and fought those 
fifty hand to hand and slew so many of them that the 
rest leaped overboard. The master had many womids 
on his head and body and divers of his men were 
wounded, yet but one slain. So with much difficulty he 
got to the Island [of Palma], where he was very cour- 
teously entertained, and supplied with whatever he 
needed." 

But New Haven ships did not always come off as 
well as in this encounter with the pirates, and their voy- 
ages were not always successful. Some members of the 
New Haven Colony bought land in Delaware and at- 
tempted to establish a trading-post in order to take ad- 
vantage of the profitable trade in beaver skins. But the 
Dutch and Swedes, who had settled there, objected to 
the coming of the English, and once, in 1642, they 
seized Captain Lamberton, who had come in his ship 
the Cock, accused him of inciting the Indians against 
them, and threw him into prison. As the charges against 
him could not be proved he was soon released, but the 
hostility of the Dutch and Swedes continued until the 
New Haven merchants were driven away from that 
coast and out of the rich fur-trade of Delaware. This 
was a great blow to the colony. Other losses, too, were 
met with, and at last the people became greatly dis- 
couraged as they saw their hopes of founding a success- 
ful commercial colony slowly, but surely, disappearing. 



38 ONCE UPON A TIME IN CONNECTICUT 

The voyage of the " Great Shippe " which took place 
about this time is the most tragic adventure in the story 
of New Haven's early shipping days. It began in this 
way. In 1646, as a last resource, the merchants of Kew 
Haven decided to fit out a ship with what was left of 
their " tradeable estate," and send her to London. Up 
to this time they had sent goods to England by way of 
Boston or of the "West Indies; there might be more 
profit, they thought, in a direct trade, cutting out the 
cost of reshipment. So they bought a ship. We do not 
know her name, she is always spoken of as the " Great 
Shippe," although she was only one hundred tons; per- 
haps the title was given her because the colonists were 
staking so much on this venture. If it succeeded, their 
prosperity might be assured; if it failed, they must give 
up the sea and commerce as a dependence and turn 
their energies to agriculture. The " Great Shippe " was 
a new boat, said to have been built in Rhode Island, and 
she was loaded principally with wheat and peas shipped 
in bulk, with West Indies hides, beaver skins, and what 
silver plate could be spared for exchange in London. 
Her cargo altogether was worth about twenty-five thou- 
sand dollars, which was a large sum in those days, espe- 
cially in a new and struggling colony. 

The master of the ship was the same Captain Lam- 
berton we have heard of before. He was a brave and 
bold skipper, but it is said that he was not altogether 



A HARBOR FOR SHIPS 39 

pleased with the ship when he first saw her; that he did 
not like her lines and thought her not quite seaworthy. 
Other people, too, besides Captain Lamberton, com- 
plained that she was not only badly built, but badly 
loaded, with the hght goods of the cargo below and the 
heavy above, and some old seamen predicted that the 
grain would shift in rough weather and make trouble. 
These were mostly rumors, however, and few paid at- 
tention to them at the time; but long afterward, when 
people talked over the strange fate of the " Great 
Shippe," Captain Lamberton's words, " This ship will 
be our grave," were recalled and believed to have been 
a prophecy. 

That winter of 1646 was a bitterly cold one in Con- 
necticut, and New Haven Harbor was frozen over. 
When the " Great Shippe " was ready to sail, it was 
necessary to cut a w^ay out for her with handsaws 
through the thick ice for nearly three miles. A good 
many people from the town walked out on the harbor 
ice beside the ship to see her begin her voyage, and to 
bid good-b3^e to a number of their friends who were 
going home to England on business of one kind or an- 
other. Seventy people had taken passage in the " Great 
Shippe," and among them were some who were very 
prominent in the colony, as, for instance, Captain JSTa- 
thaniel Turner, who, having had experience in the war 
with the Pequot Indians, had been given " the command 



40 ONCE UPON A TBIE IN CONNECTICUT 

and ordering of all martial affairs " in the plantation, 
and Thomas Gregson, one of the magistrates, who was 
charged by the colony to obtain a charter for them, if 
possible, from the English Parliament, then in control in 
England. 

Reverend John Davenport, the minister, stood in the 
crowd of people on the ice that winter day and offered 
a prayer to God for the protection of the travelers. 
" Lord," he said, " if it be thy will to bury these our 
friends in the bottom of the sea, they are thine, save 
them." This does not sound like a very cheerful send- 
off, but we must remember that a long voyage was a 
serious undertaking in those days and that people some- 
times made their wills even before sailing from New 
Haven for Boston. 

When the " Great Shippe " had really gone, when the 
people had seen the last of Captain Lamberton standing 
on her deck giving orders, and had watched her white 
sails dwindle and disappear, they walked back over the 
ice to their homes on the shore remembering sadly that 
it would be a long time before they could expect to 
have any news from her. It might be two or three 
months before she reached London and as many more 
before word of her arrival could come back to them. 
So they waited patiently through the hard New Eng- 
land winter and the early spring, but by summer time 
they were eagerly looking for tidings of her. Ships 



A HARBOR FOR SHIPS 41 

came from England as usual to the colonies, but no one 
of them brought news of the safe arrival in London of 
the " Great Shippe " from JSTew Haven. Then the peo- 
ple began to question the skippers of other boats, boats 
from the West Indies and from the plantations on the 
southern coasts, and to ask if anything had been heard 
of her in that direction. For they remembered that 
there had been an unusually violent storm soon after the 
ship had sailed, and they began to fear that she might 
have been blown out of her course and possibly wrecked 
on some such coast or island. Public prayers were 
offered for her safety and for the safety of her pas- 
sengers. Meanwhile, the summer passed and the cold 
weather came again, and still there was no word from 
the fated ship. Few vessels put into Kew England har- 
bors during the winter, and, as the chance of news grew 
less and less, the anxiety of the people gradually changed 
to despair. They recalled the sacrifices they had made 
to fit out that ship, the precious cargo she carried, all 
the things that could not be replaced (such as the ser- 
mons and other writings of Mr. Davenport which he 
had sent to England for publication) ; and in the loss 
of the ship on which they had set all their hopes they 
saw the final blow to the prosperity of New Haven. 
No one now had the courage or the money for an- 
other venture of that kind. Slowly and reluctantly the 
people turned to agriculture instead of trade, and the 



42 ONCE UPON A TIME IN CONNECTICUT 

days of New Haven as a commercial colony were 
numbered. 

But far worse to them than any material loss was the 
loss of the dear friends and relatives who had sailed 
with the " Great Shippe " for England, l^o compensa- 
tion could come to those who had loved them. In No- 
vember, 1647, the passengers on the ship were finally 
given up as lost and counted among the dead and their 
estates settled. 

Yet many to whom they were dear could not rest sat- 
isfied. They remembered all the perils of the sea, the 
dangers of shipwreck on some barren coast, of possible 
capture by pirates, such as those who had attacked Cap- 
tain Carman off the Canary Islands not many years be- 
fore, and they came to feel at last that they would be 
thankful to learn that the ship had foundered at se^ and 
that their friends had gone down with her to a natural 
death in the waters. 

Two years and a half after the sailing of the " Great 
Shippe" (so the story stands in a strange old book called 
the Magnalia Christie by the Reverend Cotton Mather), 
a wonderful vision came to the people of New Haven. 
On that June afternoon in the year 1648, a great thun- 
derstorm came up from the northwest. The sky grew 
black and threatening, there was vivid lightning, and a 
cold wind swept over the harbor. Before the rain had 
ceased and calm had come again, it was nearly sunset. 



A HARBOR FOR SHIPS 43 

Then, against the clear evening light, a strange ship 
sailed into :New Haven Harbor. Around the point she 
came Avith her sails full set and her colors flying. 
" There 's a brave ship,'' cried the children, and they 
left their play to stand and gaze at her. Men and women 
gathered on the water-front and the same startled hope 
thrilled every heart: "It may be the 'Great Shippe' 
come home again ! " For there was the old familiar out- 
line, there were her three masts, her tackling, and her 
sails. And yet there was something new and mysteri- 
ous, something awe-inspiring about her, and the watch- 
ers held their breath as they realized that she was sail- 
ing toward them straight against the wind that blew 
strong off the north shore. For a full half-hour they 
stood and gazed, until they could distinguish the dif- 
ferent parts of her rigging, until they could see, stand- 
ing high on her poop, the figure of a man with " one 
hand akimbo under his left side and in his right hand a 
sword stretched out toward the sea." Then, all at once, 
a mist rose out of the sea behind her and covered her 
like smoke, and through the mist and smoke men saw 
dimly her shrouds give way, and her masts break and 
fall, as though a hurricane had struck her, and slowly 
she careened and plunged beneath the surface of the 

water. 

The people turned to their pastor. " What does it 
mean V " they asked. " It was the form of Master Lam- 



44 ONCE UPON A TIME IN CONNECTICUT 

berton. "Why is this vision sent us?" And he replied 
that doubtless God had sent it in answer to their 23rayers, 
to show them the fate of their friends and to set their 
hearts at rest, for " this was the mould of their ship, 
and thus her tragic end." 

REFERENCES 

1. Levermore, Charles H. Hepuhlic of New Haven. Johns Hop- 
kins University Studies. Baltimore, 1886. 

2. Atwater, Edward E. History of the Colony of New Haven, 
Printed at New Haven, 1881. 

8. Blake, Henry T. Chronicles of New Haven Green. Printed at 
New Haven, 1892. 

4. Winthrop, John. History of New England. Edited by James 
Savage, Boston, 1825. 

5. Mather, Reverend Cotton. Magnolia Christi Americana^ i, 25. 
London, 1702. 



THREE JUDGES 

IN the year 1661, when the city of New Haven was a 
small village not much more than twenty years old, 
a family of boys named Sj^erry lived out on a farm some 
two or three miles west of that settlement. There was 
only one house then besides theirs outside the town in 
that direction and the woods all about were thick and 
wild. 

That summer something mysterious was going on 
near the Sperry farm. Every morning Richard Sperry 
himself, or one of his boys, carried food, in dishes cov- 
ered with a cloth, into the woods on the steep side of 
"West Rock about a mile from the house, and left it 
there on a stump. Every evening he, or one of his sons, 
went for the empty bowls and brought them home. The 
boys were curious to know who had eaten the food, for 
they never met any one coming or going, and never saw 
any one up on the Rock. In reply their father told them 
that there were men at work in the forest near by; yet 
they never heard voices nor the sound of an axe, and 
it was only long afterward that they learned the real 
reason for what they had done. If one of the boys had 
waited long enough some morning, lying still and hidden 
in the bushes, he might have seen a man come slowly 



46 ONCE UPON A TIME IN CONNECTICUT 

and cautiously through the woods toward him, a digni- 
fied, grave-looking person with something foreign in 
his dress, something soldierly in his bearing, as if he 
were accustomed to commanding others; he might have 
watched this stranger — so different from the people 
he knew — take up the dishes of food and disappear again 
into the dark forest. And he would have wondered why 
a man like that, who was evidently not a hunter and not 
a new settler, should be hiding in the woods around 
New Haven. 

Twelve years before, in England, this same man had 
taken part in a very different scene. There was a great 
trial held in the stately old Hall of Westminster and 
the prisoner at the bar was the King of England him- 
self, and among the fifty-nine judges who condemned 
him to death was the man who was now hunted for his 
own life and was in hiding near the Sperry farm that 
summer, three thousand miles away from all he loved 
in England, 

There were nearly one hundred men who had some 
part, large or small, in the trial and death of King 
Charles the First, and all of them were in great danger 
eleven years later when the Royalists returned to power 
and his son, Charles the Second, became king. A few 
who had very little to do with the king's sentence were 
pardoned; others were seized at once, tried, condemned, 
and executed in the barbarous way the English law then 



THREE JUDGES 47 

allowed, and still others tried to escape by leaving Eng- 
land. Some got safely to the Continent and wandered 
about from one foreign city to another, trying to pass 
unnoticed in the crowd, and always in danger of being 
discovered and arrested by the messengers the English 
Government sent after them. 

Three of them came to 'New England and spent some 
time in Connecticut. This is their story. 

Early in May, 1660, a ship named the Prudent Mary 
lay at Gravesend near London, getting ready to sail 
under her master. Captain Pierce, for the colonies in 
the new world. Two of the regicides, General Edward 
Whalley and General William Goffe, had taken passage 
in her, but they dared not sail under their own names 
and they came aboard as Edward Richardson and Wil- 
liam Stephenson. While the ship was waiting in Graves- 
end the new king was proclaimed. That was on Satur- 
day, May 12. The next day General Goffe wrote in his 
diary, — " May 13. Wee kept Sabbath abord." 

On Monday they sailed and were happy to get away 
from England before an order could be given for their 
arrest. The ships of those days were very small and the 
little Prudent Mary took ten weeks to make her way 
across the ocean, but at last Goffe wrote in his journal : 
"July 27. We came to anchor between Boston and 
Charlestown; between 8 and 9 in the morning; all in 
good health through the good hand of God upon us." 



48 ONCE UPON A TIME IN CONNECTICUT 

When the judges landed they were among friends, 
for most of the people in N^ew England were of their 
political party. They took their own names again, called 
on the Governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony and went 
about freely. Goffe's diary says: "Aug. 9. Went to 
Boston lecture and heard Mr. Norton. Went afterwards 
to his house where we were lovingly entertained with 
many ministers and found great respects from them." 
And on the 26th: "We visited Elder Frost, who re- 
ceived us with great kindness and love." 

This diary and his letters show that Goffe was sin- 
cere and religious, but his life tells us that he was brave 
and energetic too. He had made his own way, and both 
he and Whalley, who was his father-in-law, had been 
important men in England; they were major-generals 
who had fought in great battles and had taken part in 
great events in history. There is an old story about 
their skill in fencing. 

" At Boston," so the story runs, " there appeared a 
gallant person, some say a fencing-master, who, on a 
stage erected for the purpose, walked for several days 
challenging and defying any to play with him at swords. 
At length one of the judges disguised in a rustic dress, 
holding in one hand a cheese wrapped in a napkin for a 
shield, with a broomstick, whose mop he had besmeared 
with dirty puddle water as he passed along, mounted 
the stage. The fencing-master railed at him for his im- 



THREE JUDGES 49 

piidence, asked what business he had there, and bade 
him begone. Tlie judge stood his ground, upon which 
the gladiator made a pass at him with his sword to drive 
him off. An encounter ensued. The judge received the 
sword into the cheese and held it till he drew the mop 
of the broom over the other's mouth, and gave the gen- 
tleman a pair of whiskers. The gentleman made another 
pass, and plunging his sword a second time, it was 
caught and held in the cheese till the broom was drawn 
over his eyes. At a third lunge, the sword was caught 
again, till the mop of the broom was rubbed gently all 
over his face. Upon this, the gentleman let fall, or laid 
aside, his small sword and took up the broadsword and 
came at him with that, upon which the judge said, 
'Stop, sir! Hitherto, you see, I have only played with 
you and have not attempted to hurt you, but if you come 
at me now with the broadsword, know that I will cer- 
tainly take your life.' The firmness and determination 
with which he spoke struck the gentleman, who, desist- 
ing, exclaimed, ' Who can you be ? You are either Goff e, 
"Whalley, or the devil, for there was no other man in 
England that could beat me.' " 

For seven months the two judges lived in Cambridge 
at the house of Major Daniel Gookin, a member of the 
governor's council and a fellow passenger of theirs in 
the Prudent Mary. They went to church on Sundays, 
and no doubt on " training-days " they watched the train- 



50 ONCE UPON A TIME IN CONNECTICUT 

bands practice, for they were famous fighters them- 
selves. But meantime the news of their being in the 
colonies was carried to England by a royalist named 
Captain Breedon, and the governor debated with his 
council what to do about it. He wanted to protect them, 
but he feared the king's displeasure might bring trouble 
on the colony. Before he decided, the two judges, or 
" the two Colonels " as they were called, finding they 
were not safe in Boston, left for New Haven. 

This was their first journey in the new wilderness; 
it was winter time, and probably there was snow on the 
ground and hanging heavy on the trees — more snow than 
they had ever seen in England. Most of the road be- 
tween Boston and l^ew Haven was a trail through forests 
where a guide was necessary. They stopped at Hartford, 
were kindly received there, and reached New Haven 
early in March. For three weeks they were guests of 
the minister. Reverend John Davenport. He was their 
friend and is said to have preached a sermon from the 
text, " Hide the outcasts ; betray not him that wander- 
eth," to prepare people for their coming. Whalley's sister 
had once lived in New Haven and they had other friends 
there too. But it was very dangerous for these friends to 
try to protect them, and when word came that a reward 
had been offered in England for their arrest, the hunted 
judges left New Haven as they had left Boston before, 
pretending, this time, to go to New York. However, 



THREE JUDGES 61 

they only went as far as Milford and turned back se- 
cretly in the night to New Haven where the minister 
received them again and hid them, in his own house and 
in the houses of other friends, until May, when a still 
greater danger threatened them. 

The royal order for their arrest at last reached Boston 
and the governor there was obliged to forward it. He 
gave it to two young royalists, Thomas Kellond and 
Thomas Kirk, and on Saturday, May 11, they arrived 
with it in Guilford at the house of William Leete, the 
Governor of the New Haven Colony. Governor Leete 
took the paper and began to read it aloud, hoping some 
one in the room would overhear it and send word to 
warn the judges. Kirk and Kellond interrupted him and 
said the paper was too important to read in public. 
Then they asked for horses and a search-warrant to 
carry with them to New Haven. It took a long time to 
get the horses ; there was one delay after another, and 
the governor said he could not give them the warrant 
without consulting the other magistrates, but he would 
write a letter. It took a long time also to write the letter, 
and when both horses and letter were ready it was too 
late to start that night. The next day was Sunday and 
nobody was allowed to travel on Sunday in the New 
Haven Colony. So the messengers waited impatiently 
for Monday, and meantime they heard rumors that the 
judges had been seen in New Haven, and that Mr. Dav- 



52 ONCE UPON A TIME IN CONNECTICUT 

enport must be protecting them still, because he had 
lately put ten pounds' worth of fresh provisions in his 
house ; all of which made them still more impatient. 

On Monday, at last, they got to 'New Haven, and some 
hours later Governor Leete followed them — very slowly 
— and called the magistrates together. It took the mag- 
istrates so long to decide what to do that Kellond and 
Kirk asked bluntly whether they meant to honor and 
obey the king or not. The governor answered, " We 
honor his Majesty, but we have tender consciences." At 
last a search was ordered to be made for the regicides, 
but Kirk and Kellond were convinced by this time that 
it would be useless, and they left in disgust for New 
York. 

They were right, it was useless; for an Indian runner 
had come quickly from Guilford on Saturday, and Goff e 
and Whalley had disappeared. 

Several stories are told of their narrow escapes at this 
time. One says they were on the Neck Bridge over Mill 
Kiver on State Street when they heard the horses of 
their pursuers behind them and had only time to slip 
under the bridge and lie there hidden while the men 
rode over their heads. Another tells how a woman hid 
them in her house, in a closet whose door looked like a 
part of the wall with kitchen pots and pans hung on it. 

When they left the settlement they took refuge in the 
wild forest, and most of that summer they lived in a cave 



THREE JUDGES 53 

in a pile of boulders on the top of West Rock. The cave 
is there still, and is called "Judges' Cave" to-day. 
Richard Sperry carried food to them or sent it by one 
of his boys, and sometimes on very stormy nights they 
crept secretly down to his house and stayed with him. 
Once, in June, they went back to New Haven and 
offered to give themselves up to save their friends, if 
necessary, and arranged that Governor Leete should 
always know where to find them. Most people thought 
they had left the colony altogther then, but they were 
back in their cave on the Rock, or in some other hiding- 
place in the deep woods. Rewards were still offered for 
them and they dared not venture out. They called West 
Rock " Providence Hill," because God had provided for 
them there. And now these two men, who had led such 
stirring, active lives in England, lived in a great loneli- 
ness and silence, with no friends near them, no sounds 
but the distant crash of a falling tree, or the wind sigh- 
ing in the forest branches. There were prowling Indians 
and prowling wild beasts. Once, so the story says, a 
panther crept up stealthily to the cave at night as they 
lay in bed and put his head in at the opening, his eyes 
burning in the darkness like two fires. 

In August, when the search for them was pretty much 
over, they went to Milford. They stayed there very se- 
cretly for three years, until, in 1664, there was danger of 
another search being made. Then they went back to 



54 ONCE UPON A TIME IN CONNECTICUT 

their cave on the Rock; but it was no longer a safe place 
for them, because " some Indians in their hunting dis- 
covered the cave with the bed," and their friends made 
a different plan for their concealment. 

The exiles set out on another long journey. They 
traveled only at night, stopping and hiding in the day- 
time. The trail they followed led them up the valley of 
the Connecticut River, beyond Hartford and far into 
the north, until they came to what is now the town of 
Hadley in Massachusetts. This was then one of the far- 
thest settlements in the wilderness and very remote and 
lonely. Reverend John Russell, the minister there, gave 
them shelter and took care of them. There was a cellar 
under part of his house, and, by taking up some loose 
boards in the floor above it, they could drop down quickly 
into it if visitors came unexpectedly. In spite of the dan- 
ger to himself, Mr. Russell kept them safe in Hadley 
for twelve or fifteen years. A few friends wrote to them 
and sent them money, but no one else in the world out- 
side knew what had become of them or whether or not 
they were still alive. 

There is a famous story about one of the regicides in 
Hadley. Once, it says, in King Philip's War the In- 
dians attacked the place. They burst out of the woods 
and rushed upon the settlement on a Sunday morning 
while every one was at church. Terror-stricken and 
thrown into wild confusion by the sight of the yelling 




'-j^j'^'if'm^^ 



THREE JUDGES 65 

savages the people of Hadley were helpless, when, all 
at once, an unknown man, with whitening hair and 
strange garments, appeared in the midst of them and 
took command. He rallied them and led them out against 
the Indians and drove them back into the forest. "As 
suddenly as he had come, the deliverer of Hadley dis- 
appeared." No one ever saw him again, and the people 
said God must have sent an angel to help them. Long 
afterward they learned that it was General Goffe. 

There is not much more to tell about the judges after 
this. Whalley was an an old man now, and Goffe wrote 
to his wife, who was Whalley's daughter, " Your old 
friend" (he dared not say her father, and he signed him- 
self Walter Goldsmith instead of William Goffe) " is 
yet living, but continues in a very weak condition and 
seems not to take much notice of anything that is done 
or said, but patiently bears all things and never com- 
plains of anything. The common and very frequent 
question is to know how he doth and his answer for the 
most part is, ^ Yery well, I praise God,' which he utters' 
with a very low and weak voice." 

After Whalley died, Goffe left Hadley and went to 
Hartford. We do not know much about him there. We 
know that he was still an exile with a price on his head, 
and still hiding. In one of his letters he says to a friend, 
" Dear Sir, you know my trials are considerable, but I 
beseech you not to interpret any expression in my letters 



56 ONCE UPON A TIME IN CONNECTICUT 

as if I complained of God's dealing with me." His 
family in England had moved and he did not know 
their address or how to reach them, and in April, 
1679, he wrote to the same friend, " I am greatly 
longing to hear from my poor desolate relations, and 
whether my last summer's letters got safe to them." 
What answer he received, whether he ever heard from 
them again, we cannot tell, for his story ends with that 
last letter. 

The third regicide judge who came to Connecticut 
was Colonel John Dixwell. He spent some time with 
Whalley and Goffe at Hadley and afterward lived seven- 
teen years in 'New Haven. No search was ever made 
for him because he was supposed to have died in Enrope, 
and he was known to almost every one in the colony as 
Mr. James Davids. It was only when he was on his 
death-bed that he allowed his real name to be told. His 
house stood on the corner of Grove and College Streets ; 
he married in New Haven and had several children. 
He was a great friend of Reverend James Pierpont, 
the minister, and the story goes that they had beaten a 
path walking across their lots to talk over the fence 
and that Madame Pierpont used to ask her husband 
who that old man was who was so fond of living " an 
obscure and unnoticed life " and why he liked so much 
to talk with him, and he replied that " if she knew the 



THREE JUDGES 57 

worth and value of that old man she would not wonder 
at it." 

Once, so it is said, Sir Edmund Andros came from 
Boston to New Haven and noticed on Sunday in church 
a dignified old gentleman with an erect and military air 
very different from the rest of the people, and asked 
who he was. He was told that it was Mr. Davids, a 
New Haven merchant. " Oh, no," said Andros, " I have 
seen men and can judge them by their looks. He is no 
merchant; he has been a soldier and has figured some- 
where in a more public station than this." Some one 
warned Dixwell and he stayed away from church that 
afternoon. 

When he died he was buried in the old burying- 
ground behind Center Church on the New Haven 
Green. In 1849, one of his descendants put up the mon- 
ument to him which stands there to-day. The monu- 
ment to Goffe and Whalley is the "Judges' Cave " on 
the top of West Rock, and three streets in New Haven 
are also named for the three regicide judges who came 
to Connecticut. 

REFERENCES ^^ 

1. Hutchinson, Thomas. History of 3IassachuseUs^ Salem and 
Boston, 1795. 

2. The Mather Papers, in 3fassachicsetts Historical Collections^ 
4th series, vol. 8. 

3. Dexter, F. B. Memoranda respecting Edward Whalley and 



58 ONCE UPON A TIME IN CONNECTICUT 

William Goffe, in Papers of the New Haven Colony Histori- 
cal Society, vol. 2. 

4. Stiles, Ezra. A History of Three of the Judges of King Charles 
First. Hartford, 1794. Reprinted in Library of American 
History., Samuel L. Knapp, editor. New York, 1839. 

5. Goife's Diary, in Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical 
Society, 1863-64. 

6. Judd, Sylvester. History of Hadley. Introduction to edition 
of 1905. H. R. Huntting & Co. Springfield, 1905. 



THE FORT ON THE RIVER 

A BOY named Lion Gardiner was born in England 
in 1599, toward the end of the reign of Queen 
Elizabeth. He was strong, active, and energetic, and as 
he grew up he was trained to be an engineer. Like a 
good many other ambitious young Englishmen of his 
day, he took service in the Low Countries, — that is, in 
what is now Holland and Belgium, — where the people 
were fighting against Spain for their independence. He 
was employed as " an engineer and master of works 
of fortification in the legers [camps] of the Prince of 
Orange." 

"While he was in Holland he received an offer from 
a group of English "Lords and Gentlemen" of the 
Puritan party, who were interested in colonization in 
America, to go to New England and construct works of 
fortification there. " I was to serve them," he says, " in 
the drawing, ordering, and making of a city, towns, or 
forts of defence," and " I was appointed to attend such 
orders as Mr. John Winthrop, Esq., should appoint, and 
that we should choose a place both for the convenience 
of a good harbour and also for capableness and fitness 
for fortification." 

Lion Gardiner signed an agreement with them for 



60 ONCE UPON A TIME IN CONNECTICUT 

four years at one hundred pounds, or five hundred dol- 
lars, a year and expenses paid to America for himself 
and his family. He was married before he left Holland 
and he and his wife sailed for London, July 10, 1635, in 
a small North Sea bark named the Batcheler. A month 
later they left London in the same little ship bound for 
Boston. The Batcheler was very small; there were only 
twelve men and two women on board, and these two 
women were Gardiner's wife, Mary Wilemson, and her 
maid, Eliza Coles. The voyage was rough and stormy 
and lasted nearly three months and a half. When they 
arrived in Boston on November 28, the snow was knee- 
deep, and the winter set in so cold and forbidding that 
there was some delay in carrying out the plans for the 
new colony. As Lieutenant Gardiner was an " expert 
engineer," the people of Boston were glad to take ad- 
vantage of his stay with them to employ him in finishing 
some fortifications for them on Fort Hill. 

In the spring he sailed once more on the little Batch- 
eler for the mouth of the Connecticut River, where 
it had been decided to build the new fort and plant the 
new colony. This place was selected partly because 
of its good harbor, and partly because a fort here 
would command the entrance to this "Long, Fresh, 
Rich River." 

The "Lords and Gentlemen" who planned this un- 
dertaking included Lord Saye and Sele, Lord Brooke, 



THE FORT ON THE RIVER 61 

John Pym, and other well-known men in the Puritan 
party. They were opposed to the Government in Eng- 
land both in politics and religion, and at one time, when 
matters went strongly against their party, some of them 
expected to come to America. It is said that Oliver 
Cromwell, afterward Lord Protector of England, and 
John Hampden, his cousin, were among this number. 
It is at least true that Lieutenant Gardiner was ordered 
to construct " within the fort " houses suitable for " men 
of quality " and to erect " some convenient buildings for 
the receipt of gentlemen." The place was named Say- 
brook for Lord Saye and Sele and for Lord Brooke. It 
was not a colony of merchants like the New Haven Col- 
ony, nor of farmers like the Connecticut Colony; it was 
a military post, and it was planned as a refuge in the 
ISTew World for influential men in public life in England 
who might be forced to leave their own country. 

John Winthrop, Jr., who was to be the governor of 
the settlement, had sent a ship in November with car- 
penters and other workmen to take possession of the 
place and to begin building, but when Lieutenant Gar- 
diner arrived at the mouth of the Connecticut in March, 
he found that not much had been done — only a few 
trees cut down and a few huts put up. He set to work 
at once and built a fort " of a kind of timber called ^ a 
read oack,'" and across the neck of land behind the fort 
he built a " palisade of whole trees set in the ground." 



62 ONCE UPON A TIME IN CONNECTICUT 

The fort was on a point of land running out into the 
river just above its mouth. There were salt marshes 
around it, and on three sides it was protected by water. 
Dutch sailors had first discovered this place and called 
it " Ivievet's Hook " from the cry of the birds (pee- 
wees) whom they heard there. The Dutch themselves 
intended to establish a trading-post here, but they were 
driven away by the arrival of the English. 

The " Lords and Gentlemen " in England had promised 
to send Lieutenant Gardiner " three hundred able men" 
that spring, to help him; "two hundred to attend for- 
tification, fifty to till the ground, and fifty to build 
houses," but they did not come and he was greatly dis- 
appointed. George Fenwick, acting as agent of the com- 
pany, however, arrived to see how matters were pro- 
gressing at Saybrook. Fenwick was the only one of the 
Puritan " gentlemen" who ever came to New England; 
for conditions were rapidly changing in English politics, 
and their party was soon engaged in a struggle with the 
Government that kept all its prominent leaders at home. 
But although Lion Gardiner was left without enough 
workmen and with few supplies, he made the most of 
his resources, and his little fort, built under such difii- 
culties, soon became an important place because of the 
protection it gave to the planters against the Indians. 

He was scarcely established at Saybrook before 
trouble broke out with the Pequots, a large and power- 



THE FORT ON THE RIVER 63 

fill tribe of Indians. There were wrongs and misnnder- 
standings on both sides, and at last the Pequots mur- 
dered Captain Stone, a Virginia trader, in his boat on 
the Connecticut River, and most of the party with him. 
IS^ot long after this John Oldham, a Massachusetts trader, 
was killed on Block Island. These and other outrages 
led the Massachusetts Colony to demand satisfaction of 
the Pequots and the surrender of the murderers. Lieu- 
tenant Gardiner, in his exposed position, felt that a war 
just then would be a mistake, and he sent a protest to 
the magistrates of Massachusetts to " entreat them to 
rest awhile, till we get more strength here about," he 
said, "and provide for it; for I have but twenty-four 
in all, men, women, and boys and girls, and not food for 
them for two months unless we save our cornfield, which 
could not be if it came to war for it is two miles from 
our house. I know, if you make war with these Pequots, 
myself with these few you will leave at the stake to be 
roasted or for hunger to be starved; for Indian corn is 
now twelve shillings per bushel and we have but three 
acres planted. War is like a three-footed stool ; want one 
foot and down comes all, and these three feet are men, 
victuals, and munition; therefore, seeing in peace we 
are like to be famished, what will be done in war? 
Wherefore I think it will be best only to fight against 
Captain Hunger." 

But the Massachusetts people did not take his advice. 



64 ONCE UPON A TIME IN CONNECTICUT 

Instead, they sent out an expedition under Captain En- 
decott, to punish the Pequots. This expedition burnt 
the Indian wigwams and cornfields on Block Island, 
and also in the Pequot country near the mouth of the 
Pequot, or Thames, River; and Captain Endecott and 
his soldiers came to Saybrook Fort and made that place 
their headquarters, " to my great grief," said Gardiner, 
"for you come hither to raise these wasps about my 
ears and then you will take wing and flee away." 

His prophecy came true, for the expedition returned 
to Boston without having accomplished anything except 
to enrage the Indians still further and to make the po- 
sition of the little garrison at the fort more difficult than 
ever. 

Even before this they had found it dangerous to trade 
with the Indians. About the time that Gardiner sent 
his protest to Massachusetts, a Saybrook man, Thomas 
Hurlburt, had a narrow escape from death in the Pequot 
country, where he had gone with a trading party, and 
he was only saved by the kindness and compassion of 
an Indian woman. He stepped into the sachem's wig- 
wam to inquire about some stolen horses. While he was 
there, the Indians having for some reason left him alone 
for a moment, the sachem's wife, Wincumbone, came 
back and made signs to him secretly that the men were 
planning to kill him. " He drew his sword," ran to his 
companions, and barely got aboard the boat in time. 



THE FORT ON THE RIVER 65 

" This caused me," says Lieutenant Gardiner, " to keep 
watch and ward, for I saw that they plotted our destruo 
tion." 

From this time on the fort was almost besieged by 
Indians who lay in ambush around it, watching and 
waiting for a chance to attack any of the garrison who 
might venture out. 

One day two men were " beating samp at the Garden 
Pales," not far from the fort, when the sentinels called 
to them to run in quickly because a number of Pequots 
were creej^ing up to catch them. " I, hearing it," says 
Gardiner, " went up to the redoubt and put two cross- 
bar shot into the two guns that lay above, and levelled 
them at the trees in the middle of the limbs and boughs. 
The Indians began a long shout, and then the two great 
guns went off and divers of them were hurt." 

These " two great guns " were two pieces, of three 
inches each, by which the fort was defended. 

" After this," writes Gardiner, " I immediately took 
men and went to our cornfield to gather our corn, ap- 
pointing others to come with the shallop [the boat] and 
fetch it, and I left five lusty men in the strong house I 
had built for the defense of the corn. JS'ow, these men, 
not regarding the charge I had given them, three of 
them went a mile from the house, a-fowling; and hav- 
ing loaded themselves with fowl, they returned. The 
Pequots let them pass first, till they had loaded them- 



66 ONCE UPON A TIME IN CONNECTICUT 

selves, but at their return they arose out of their am- 
bush and shot all three; one of them escaped through 
the corn, shot through the leg, the other two they tor- 
mented." 

An equally cruel fate befell a trader named Tilly, 
who was taken alive by the Indians and tortured. Tilly 
came from Massachusetts Bay and was going up the 
river to Hartford. When he landed at Saybrook, as all 
travelers were obliged to do, he saw a paper nailed up 
over the fort gate with orders that no boat going up 
the river should stop anywhere between Saybrook and 
Wethersfield. These orders were put up by Lieutenant 
Gardiner because a boat with three men well armed in 
it had lately been captured by the river Indians. Tilly, 
however, refused to obey, and quarreled with Gardiner. 
" I wish you, and also charge you," said Gardiner to 
him in reply, " to observe that which you have read at 
the gate; 'tis my duty to God and my masters which is 
the ground of this, had you but eyes to see it; but you 
will not till you feel it." Tilly went up the river safely, 
obeying orders; but coming down, when he was about 
three miles above Saybrook, he went ashore with only 
one man and carelessly fired off his gun. The Indians, 
hearing it, came up, captured him, and carried him 
away. Gardiner called the spot where this happened 
" Tilly's Folly." 

It was a winter of great responsibility and danger 



THE FORT ON THE RIVER 67 

for Lieutenant Lion Gardiner, and all his courage and 
good sense were needed to carry him safely through it. 
Once he was himself wounded by Lidian arrows and 
nearly lost his life. On the 22d of February, he " went 
out with ten men and three dogs, half a mile from the 
house, to burn the weeds, leaves, and reeds upon the 
neck of land " behind the fort, when, suddenly, four Li- 
dians " started up out of the fiery reeds," and the senti- 
nels he had set to watch called to him that a great many 
more were coming from " the other side of the marsh." 
The Indians attacked his party, killed three or four 
men, and tried to get between the rest and the fort and 
cut off their return. " They kept us in a half-moon," 
says Gardiner, " we retreating and exchanging many a 
shot . . . defending ourselves with our naked swords, 
or else they had taken us all alive. ... I was shot with 
many arrows, but my buff coat preserved me, only one 
hurt me." The English soldiers of those days wore back 
and breast pieces of steel over their buff coats. A few 
days later, the Indians, believing Gardiner dead, came 
again and surrounded the fort, and, as the old record 
says, " made many proud challenges and dared the Eng- 
lish out to fight," but Gardiner ordered the " two great 
guns " set off once more, and the Indians disappeared. 
Finding the fort at Saybrook so well defended, the 
Pequots fell upon the settlement at Wethersfield, killed 
a number of men working in the fields, and carried off 



68 ONCE UPON A TIME IN CONNECTICUT 

two young girls. Flushed with this success, they pad- 
dled down the river in their canoes and when they 
passed the Saybrook fort they set up poles, like masts, 
in the canoes and, by way of bravado, hung upon thera 
the clothes of the Englishmen whom they had murdered. 
The men in the fort fired on the canoes, but the distance 
was too great. One shot just grazed the bow of the 
boat in which were the two young English girls. The 
Indians passed safely and carried their captives with 
them to the Pequot country. 

The Connecticut men now determined to put a stop 
to the depredations of the Pequots. It was a serious 
undertaking, for there were only about two hundred 
and fifty Englishmen in all Connecticut at this time, 
and there were several hundred Pequot warriors. Help 
was asked from the colonies in Massachusetts, and, 
meanwhile, about ninety men were collected from the 
three settlements of Hartford, Wethersfield, and "Wind- 
sor and sent down to Saybrook under the command of 
Captain John Mason. A number of friendly Indians 
also went with them, and chief among these was Uncas, 
sachem of the Mohegans. 

"While this expedition was at Saybrook, taking coun- 
sel with Lieutenant Lion Gardiner and making ready, 
a Dutch boat put in at the fort on its way to trade in 
the Pequot country. The officers at the fort were un- 
willing to let the boat proceed, for there were articles 



THE FORT ON THE RIVER 69 

on board for trade with the Indians that might be use- 
ful to the latter in war time, such as kettles, out of which 
the Indians could make arrowheads. The Dutch, how- 
ever, promised that if they were allowed to go on they 
would do all in their power to obtain the release of the 
two caiDtive English girls. So they were given permis- 
sion and they sailed for the Pequot River. There the 
master of the boat went ashore and offered to trade with 
the Indians. 

" What do you want in return for your goods ? " 
asked the Pequot sachem. 

" The two English maids," answered the Dutchman. 

But the sachem would not consent. After a time, 
however, the Dutch captain succeeded in enticing sev- 
eral of the principal Indians on board his boat, and, 
having secured them there as hostages, he called to the 
others on shore that if they wanted their men returned 
they must bring the two young girls. " If not," said he, 
" we set sail and will turn all your Indians overboard 
in the main ocean so soon as ever we come out." The 
Pequots refused to believe him until the boat was actu- 
ally under way and sailing down the river; then at last 
they yielded, gave up the two English girls, and re- 
ceived the seven Indians in return. 

These two poor little girls reached Saybrook in a sad 
condition, worn out and frightened. The Dutch sailors 
had kindly given them their own linen jackets because 



70 ONCE UPON A TIME IN CONNECTICUT 

the girls had lost most of their clothes, and Lieutenant 
Gardiner paid ten pounds out of his own purse for their 
redemption. The Indians seem, on the whole, to have 
treated them well. They were saved from death at first 
by the pity and intercession of Wincumbone, the same 
chieftain's wife who once before had saved Thomas 
Hurlburt. She took care of them, the girls said, and 
they told how " the Indians carried them from place to 
place and showed them their forts and curious wigwams 
and houses, and encouraged them to be merry." But 
they could not be very merry, and the elder, who was 
sixteen, said that she slipped " behind the rocks and 
under the trees " as often as she could to pray God to 
send them help. The Dutch governor was so much in- 
terested in their story that he sent for the girls to come 
to ]^ew Amsterdam (later New York), that he might 
see them and hear them tell of their adventures. At 
last, after all these journeyings, they were sent back 
safely to their homes in Wethersfield. , 

Soon after this, Captain Mason and his company set 
out from Saybrook on their expedition against the Pe- 
quots. After burning the Indian fort at Mystic, in which 
many women and children lost their lives, and killing 
several hundred Pequot warriors, they returned victo- 
rious. They reached the bank of the Connecticut oppo- 
site Saybrook at sunset, too late to cross the river that 
night, but they were welcomed by a salute from the 



THE FORT ON THE RIVER 71 

guns of the fort; " being nobly entertained by Lieuten- 
ant Gardiner with many great guns," as Captain Mason 
expressed it. The destruction of the Pequots reheved 
Saybrook Fort from danger and secured the safety of 
the colonists in Connecticut ; there was never again any 
serious trouble with the Indians. But the story is a 
cruel one, and we can only forgive it when we remem- 
ber that the settlers felt that their own lives, and the 
lives of their wives and little children, were in constant 
danger from the attacks of the savages. 

When the four years of his contract were ended, in 
the summer of 1639, Lieutenant Lion Gardiner left 
Saybrook Fort, which he had defended so bravely, and 
went to live on an island he had bought from the Indi- 
ans. This island, still known as " Gardiner's Island," is 
at the end of Long Island and must have been very re- 
mote in those days, and far from any white neighbors. 
But Gardiner was on the best of terms with the Long 
Island Indians, and between him and their sachem, Wai- 
andance, there was a true and generous friendship, 
founded on mutual respect and trust, which lasted 
throughout their lives. When Waiandance died, in 1658, 
Gardiner wrote, " My friend and brother is gone, who 
will now do the like ? " It is a noble record of friend- 
ship between a white man and an Indian. 

About the time that Lieutenant Gardiner left the 
fort, George Fenwick, who had come to Saybrook once 



72 ONCE UPON A TIME IN CONNECTICUT 

before, in 1636, came again and brought his wife. Lady 
Fenwick. She was Alice Apsley, the widow of Sir John 
Boteler, and was called " Lady " by conrtesy. They 
lived in Saybrook for a number of years. An old letter 
of that time says that " Master Fenwick and the Lady 
Boteler [his wife] and Master Higginson, their chap- 
lain, were living in a fair house, and well fortified." In 
1644, Fenwick, as agent, sold Saybrook to the Con- i 
necticut Colony. The next year Lady Fenwick died and 
was buried within the fort. Her tomb can be seen to- , 
day in the old cemetery on Saybrook Point, to which it 1 
was removed in 1870. 

Although when the Pequot War was over Saybrook 
was no longer exposed to constant attacks from the In- 
dians, yet, for a woman brought up as Lady Fenwick had 
been, in ease and comfort, life there must have been full 
of hardship. But she made no complaint. All that we 
know of her is good and charming. She loved flowers 
and fruits and had her gardens and her pet rabbits. 
She brought with her some red Devon cattle which she 
gave to Mr. Whitfield in Guilford. She has left behind 
her a memory of gentleness and kindness that still clings 
to the story of the rough, little pioneer fort, set in the 
midst of the salt marshes and surrounded by savage 
neighbors : — 

♦' And ever this wave-washed shore 

Shall be linked with her tomb and fame, \ 

And blend with the wind and the billowy roar 
The music of her name." 



THE FORT ON THE RIVER 73 

One more fact deserves to be remembered in connec- 
tion with Saybrook. Yale College was organized there 
in 1701 as the " Collegiate School " of the Connecticut 
Colony, and was not removed to Kew Haven nntil six- 
teen years later. Its site in Saybrook is marked now by 
a granite boulder with a tablet and inscription. About 
half a mile west of this monument are two old millstones 
which are said to have been in use in the gristmill be- 
longing to the first little fort at Saybrook, the " Fort on 
the River," which was built and defended by the " Brave 
Lieutenant Lion Gardiner." 




Signature and Seal op Lion Gardiner 



REFERENCES 

1. Winthrop, John. History of New England. Edited by James 
Savage. Boston, 1825. 

2. Gardiner, Curtiss C. " Papers and Biography of Lion Gardi- 
ner," in Lion Gardiner and his Descendants. A. Whipple. 
St. Louis, 1890. 

3. Orr, Charles. History of the PequotWar. (Accounts of Mason, 
Underhill, Vincent and Gardiner.) The Helman-Taylor Co. 
Cleveland, 1897. 

4. Newton, Arthur Percival. The Colonizing Activities of the 
English Puritans. Yale University Press. New Haven, 1914. 

5. Saybrook Quadrimillenial. November 27, 1885. Hartford, 
1886. 



THE FEOGS OF WINDHAM 

OKCE, in the days of Indian attacks on the small 
English settlements in Connecticut, a family of chil- 
dren had a narrow escape from capture by the savages. 

A party of Indians on the warpath passed near their 
home while their father and elder brothers were away 
working in the fields with the neighbors. It was the 
custom in those dangerous times for men to work to- 
gether in companies, going from one man's fields and 
meadows to another's, and for greater safety they car- 
ried their firearms with them. They stacked the guns on 
the edge of the field with a sentinel to watch them and 
keep a lookout for possible Indians. Sometimes it was a 
boy who did this sentry duty, standing on a stump like 
a sentry in a box. 

There was no one left at home that day but a girl 
fourteen years old and her four younger brothers. The 
mother had died not long before and the little sister was 
caring for the family. All unconscious that any In- 
dians were near, she went down to the spring for water. 
As she lifted the full pail she caught sight of a dark, 
painted face peering at her from a thicket on the edge 
of the clearing. She dropped the pail at once and ran as 
fast as she could to the house, calling to the boys to run 



THE FROGS OF WINDHAM 75 

in too and help her close the heavy door. Doors were pro- 
tected then by a thick wooden bar across them on the 
inside. The children hurried in and, working together, 
they got the bar in position before the Indians reached 
the house. But the two halves of the door yielded a 
little, just enough to let the edge of a tomahawk through, 
which hacked away at the wooden bar while the chil- 
dren stood watching, paralyzed with fear. Fortunately 
their own cries as they ran toward the house had reached 
the men in the fields, who dropped their scythes, seized 
their guns, and drove off the Indians. But the bar was 
half cut through before help reached the terrified chil- 
dren. 

Stories like this one, and others with less happy end- 
ings, are common, not only in the written history of 
Connecticut, but in the unwritten traditions of Connec- 
ticut families. Whenever there was trouble with the 
Indians the settlers were exposed to these dangers. In 
the long wars between France and England for the 
possession of America, the Indians were often allies of 
the French, and then the English settlements suffered 
greatly from their attacks. 

In 1754, not long before the beginning of the last 
" French-and-Indian War " (1756-63), there were sev- 
eral reasons why the people of Windham, in the north- 
eastern part of Connecticut, were especially afraid of a 
surprise and attack by the Indians. Their town was on 



76 ONCE UPON A TIME IN CONNECTICUT 

the border of the colony and less protected than some 
other places, and they also feared that they had lately 
given offense to the Indians by planning a new town 
on what was known as the " Wyoming territory " (in 
the present State of Pennsylvania). These lands were 
still held by the Indians, but Connecticut claimed them 
under her patent, and although the Windham people 
intended to pay the Indians fairly for them they were 
not sure that the Indians would not resent being forced 
to sell and be hostile to them in consequence. 

l!^ews soon reached them that war had begun in the 
Ohio country beyond the Susquehannah, and that an 
expedition against the French had gone there from Vir- 
ginia under the command of a young officer named 
George Washington. They heard this name then for 
the first time and with indifference, of course, not know- 
ing that it belonged to a man who would become very 
famous later, and be honored as no other man in Amer- 
ica has ever been honored ; but they understood at once 
that war-time was no time in which to plant a new town. 
The company which had been formed for the purchase 
of the Susquehannah lands, and which included such 
well-known men as Colonel Eliphalet Dyer and Jede- 
diah Elderkin, therefore put off the undertaking until 
peace should come again. 

Meanwhile, people in Windham grew anxious about 
their own safety. If the Indians were in truth offended, 



THE FROGS OF WINDHAM 77 

would not the French now encourage them to take their 
revenge ? That dread of the cruel savages, which was 
continually in the minds of all Connecticut settlers in 
those early days, increased in Windham as rumors 
reached there, from time to time, of uprisings among 
the Indians. On the spring and summer evenings of 
that year breathless tales were told about Indian at- 
tacks : old tales which, like the one at the beginning of 
this story, had been handed down from earlier days in 
Connecticut, and new tales of fresh atrocities on the 
borders of the northern settlements in Maine and New 
Hampshire. The children hstened as long as they were 
allowed and then went to bed trembling, seeing fierce 
painted faces and threatening feather headdresses in 
every dark shadow. Older people asked each other what 
would happen when the men were called out to serve 
in the army and the women and children were left help- 
less at home. 

"While the town was in this tense state of anxiety, 
those of its inhabitants who lived near Windham Green 
were awakened out of their sleep, one warm June night, 
by strange and unaccountable noises. " There began to 
be a rumble, rumble, rumble in the air, and it grew 
louder and louder and seemed to be like drums beat- 
ing." A negro servant, coming home late, heard it first. 
The night was still and black, and clouds hung low over 
the hot hillsides. He thought it might be thunder, but 



78 ONCE UPON A TIME IN CONNECTICUT 

there was no lightning and no storm coming. He stopped 
and listened, and the sounds grew stranger and wilder. 
Perhaps it was witches, or devils; perhaps the Judg- 
ment Day was at hand ! Terror seized him and he ran 
home breathless and awoke his master. 

By this time others, too, were awake; windows flew 
open and heads were pushed out, and everybody asked, 
"What is it? What is it?" Some hurried out half- 
dressed, and frightened women and crying children 
gathered on the Green ; they could not see one anothers' 
white faces in the darkness. The beating of drums drew 
nearer and nearer. " It is the French and Indians com- 
ing," cried the men; but no one could tell from which 
direction the enemy was advancing; the dreadful noise 
seemed to come from all sides at once, even from over- 
head in the sky. 

By and by they thought they could distinguish words 
in the uproar. Deep bass voices thundered, " We '11 
have Colonel Dyer ; we '11 have Colonel Dyer," and 
shrill high ones answered, "Elderkin, too; Elderkin, 
too." As these were the names of the two lawyers in 
Windham who had been most prominently connected 
with the Wyoming plan, — the " Susquehannah Pur- 
chase " as it was called, — every one was sure that a 
band of Indians bent on revenge was approaching, and 
hearts beat fast in fear. 

All night long the noises lasted, sometimes coming 



THE FROGS OF WINDHAM 79 

nearer, sometimes dying away in the distance, and all 
night long the people of Windham waited in dread and 
awful expectation. At last, toward daybreak, the dark 
clouds slowly lifted and with the first light in the east 
the sounds ceased. In the gray, early morning men 
looked at each other and then crept silently back, each 
to his own home. When the sun rose, clear and bright, 
and no French and no Indians had appeared, Windham 
regained its courage, and before the morning was over 
an explanation had been found of the strange noises of 
the night. 

The frogs in the millpond had had a great battle, or 
some terrible catastrophe had overtaken them. Dead 
and dying frogs lay on the ground all about the pond, 
and their gurgles and croaks and clamor had made all 
the trouble and excitement. The story was soon told all 
over Connecticut, and everybody laughed, and ballads 
and songs were written about it, to the great mortifica- 
tion of the people of Windham. Yet the danger that 
explained the terror of that night was a real one in the 
history of many a Connecticut town, and therefore the 
Frogs of Windham have their legitimate place in Con- 
necticut's story. 



80 ONCE UPON A TIME IN CONNECTICUT 



REFERENCES 

1. Lamed, Ellen. History of Windham County. Worcester, 1874. 

2. Barber, J. W. Cotinecticiit Historical Collections. J. W. Barber. 
New Haven, 1836. 

3. Todd, Charles Burr. In Okie Connecticut. The Grafton Press. 
New York, 1906. 

4. Sylvester, Herbert Milton. Indian Wars of New England. 
W. B. Clarke Co. Boston, 1910. 



OLD WOLF PUTNAM 

ONE day, long ago, some boys were out bird-nesting. 
They saw a nest they wanted high up in a tree 
and far out on a Hmb, in a hard position to reach. One 
of the boldest of them climbed the tree to try to get it, 
but a branch broke with him and he fell. A lower pro- 
jecting limb caught his clothes, and he hung there head 
down, arms and legs dangling helplessly. He could not 
climb back and he could not drop down, because he 
could not get free. 

The other boys below looked up, terrified, for the limb 
was high above ground; they could not reach him, and 
they did not know what to do. One of them carried a 
gun, and Israel, — that was the name of the boy who had 
climbed the tree, — catching sight of the gun as he 
swung in the air, cried out, " Shoot ! Shoot the branch 
off near the trunk ! " 

The boy with the gun was afraid and hesitated. 
Israel's position grew more and more uncomfortable 
and dangerous. 

"Shoot, I tell you I" he cried again. "Shoot! I'll 
take the risk." 

The boy lifted the gun with shaking hands, took aim, 
and fired. The branch cracked off and down came Israel 



82 ONCE UPON A TIME IN CONNECTICUT 

with it, head first; but as he fell he managed to grasp 
another bough with his hands, hold by it, and swing 
safely to the ground. The next day he went back alone, 
climbed that tree again, and brought home the nest. 

This is a story told of Israel Putnam, afterward 
major-general in the American army in the Revolu- 
tionary War, and it shows the qualities of courage and 
perseverance, invention and quick decision, which 
made him useful to his country when he grew to be a 
man. 

He was born in Salem, Massachusetts, January 7, 
1718, and most of his boyhood was spent there. It is 
said that the first time he went to Boston as a little awk- 
ward country lad, some city boys made fun of him. 
Israel stood this as long as he could, then he suddenly 
challenged a bigger boy than himself, fought him, and 
beat him, to the great amusement of a crowd of spectators. 
After that the boys let him alone. He was strong and 
vigorous and loved all kinds of outdoor sports. Before 
he was grown he could do a man's full day's work in 
the fields and was very proud of it. When he was twenty- 
two years old he moved with his wife and baby son to 
Pomfret, Connecticut, bought a farm there, and cast in 
his lot with the people of this state, so that he is a son 
of Connecticut by adoption. 

He worked hard in his new home, and in a few years 
he was in a fair way to be rich and prosperous. It was 



OLD WOLF PUTNAM 83 

at this time that the incident happened that gave him his 
nickname of " Wolf Putnam." 

Just across the narrow valley from his farm there was 
a steep hillside, and among its rocks a wolf had her den. 
She was old and wary, and did a lot of damage in the 
neighborhood by killing sheep and lambs. Traps were 
set to catch her and the farmers often tried to shoot her, 
but she always got away safely. 

In the winter of 1743, she destroyed many of Israel 
Putnam's fine flock and he was greatly exasperated and 
made a plan with five other men to hunt her regularly, 
by twos in turn, until she was found and killed. She 
had once been nearly caught in a trap, and had only got 
out by leaving the claws of one foot behind her, so that 
her trail was easy to distinguish on the snow, one foot 
being shorter than the other, and making a different 
mark. One night they followed her all night long, and in 
the morning traced her back to her den in the hillside 
and made sure of its exact location. Then all day long 
they worked hard, trying to get her out. They burned 
straw and brimstone in the entrance of the cave, hoping 
to smoke her out; they sent in the dogs, but these came 
back wounded and bleeding and refused to go again. 
Putnam's own fine bloodhound refused to go in, and 
then he decided to try it himself and shoot the wolf in- 
side the cave, since there was no way of making her 
come out. He took off his coat, tied a rope around his 



84 ONCE UPON A TIME IN CONNECTICUT 

waist, and with a torch and a gun, crawled in on his hands 
and knees as well as he could. Far back in the deep 
darkness the blazing eyes of the wolf showed him her 
lair. She growled and made ready to spring at him, but 
he fired and fortunately killed her with the first shot, 
and the men outside dragged him and the wolf out to- 
gether. Israel Putnam was a young man then and almost 
a stranger in the place, but his courage and resourceful- 
ness that day made him known to the people and gave 
him a reputation among them. 

In some ways he had been at a disadvantage in Pom- 
fret, for the people there, even in those early times, 
cared much about education. Soon after the place was set- 
tled, a library association was formed to provide reading 
matter for the families living near. Ten young men 
from Pomfret graduated at Yale College in the class of 
1759. Xow, Israel Putnam's early education had been 
neglected. He did not love study, he loved outdoor life, 
and there was no schoolhouse near his home in Salem. 
He never learned to spell correctly. Some of his letters, 
which have been preserved, are almost impossible to 
read now, the spelling is so very curious. Later in his 
life, when he became a general in the army and was 
brought in contact with Washington and other educated 
and trained men, he was mortified and much ashamed 
of his own lack in this respect. He tried then to dictate 
his letters as often as possible so that people should not 



OLD WOLF PUTNAM 85 

laugh at his ignorance. It made him careful to give his 
children a better education than his own. 

In 1755, when he was thirty-seven years old, Israel 
Putnam entered the Provincial army for service in the 
French-and-Indian War, and rose to the rank of colonel 
before the war was over in 1764. He went with the Con- 
necticut troops on several expeditions against the French 
forts at Crown Point and Ticonderoga, on Lake Cham- 
plain and Lake George. He had plenty of exciting 
adventures in this war, and long afterward, in his old 
age, he liked to tell them over to his friends and 
neighbors at home. Some of the stories have come 
down to us. 

Once word came to the English camp at Fort Edward 
that a wagon train bringing supplies had been plun- 
dered by a party of French and Indians, and Major 
Robert Rogers, with his New England Rangers and a 
detachment of Provincial troops, — some of whom were 
under Putnam's command, — was sent out to intercejDt 
the enemy on their retreat. These rangers, or scouts, 
had been drilled by their famous leader until they almost 
equaled the Indians in their own mode of fighting, and 
they were of great use in the war. This time they were 
too late and the plunderers escaped, but as other par- 
ties were said to be hovering near, Rogers spent some 
days searching for them. He saw no signs of them and 
at last turned back toward the fort. 



86 ONCE UPON A TIME IN CONNECTICUT 

One morning, contrary to his usual practice, he al- 
lowed some of his men to fire at a mark for a wager. 
This was a dangerous thing to do because they could 
never be sure that there were no enemies lurking near. 
It happened this time that a large body of French and 
Indians were not far off, and, hearing the firing, they 
came up quickly and silently through the thick forest 
and hid themselves in ambush, Indian fashion, near a 
clearing in the woods where the tall trees had been cut 
down and a thicket of small underbrush had grown up. 
The English were obliged to pass this clearing on their 
way home and the only path across it was a narrow one 
used by the Indians, who always went through the 
woods in single file, one behind another, each stepping 
in the footprints of the man ahead of him. 

The English were in three companies, the first com- 
manded by Putnam, the last by Rogers himself. Put- 
nam and his men had got safely across the clearing and 
were just entering the forest again, when suddenly, the 
enemy sprang out of their ambush and rushed upon 
them. Putnam rallied his men and made the best stand 
he could and the other companies hurried to his assist- 
ance. But in the sharp skirmish that followed, as Put- 
nam aimed his gun at a large, powerful Indian chief, it 
missed fire. The Indian sprang upon him, dragged him 
back into the forest, and tied him securely to a tree. 
As the fight went on, bullets from both parties began 



OLD WOLF PUTNAM 87 

to fly past him and to hit the tree, so that for a time he 
was in as great danger from his friends as from his ene- 
mies. When, at last, the French and Indians were re- 
pulsed, the latter marched Putnam away with them as 
their prisoner back to their camp. His arms were tied 
tightly behind him, his shoes were taken away so that 
his feet were bruised and bleeding, and he was loaded 
with so many packs that he could scarcely move. When 
he could stand it no longer he begged the savages to 
kill him at once. The Indian who had captured him 
came up just then and gave him a pair of moccasins, 
and made the others loosen his arms and lighten his 
load. But when they reached the camping-place a worse 
ordeal was before him. His clothes were taken off, he 
was tied again to a tree, dry brushwood was piled in a 
circle around the tree, fire was set to this, and, as the 
flames rose up and the heat grew greater, he felt sure 
that his last hour had come. However, word had reached 
one of the French oflScers that the Indians were tortur- 
ing their prisoner, and he rushed in, scattered the burn- 
ing brush, and unbound the prisoner. 

The Indians who had captured Israel Putnam may 
not have intended to kill him, but it was their custom 
to torture prisoners taken in war, and both the French 
and the English officers often had great difficulty in con- 
trolling their savage allies. 

Putnam was carried to Canada and treated kindly by 



88 ONCE UPON A TIME IN CONNECTICUT 

the French, and a few months later he was exchanged 
and sent home with some other prisoners. 

Once before he had had a narrow escape from the 
Indians and only his quick decision and courage saved 
him. He was on a river-bank when they crept up be- 
hind him. Calling to the five men with him, he rushed 
for the boat and pushed off downstream toward some 
dangerous rapids. The Indians fired and missed him, 
and the boat shot down the rapids. It came out safe 
below them, — the first boat that had ever done so, — 
and the Indians thought it must be under the protection 
of their own Great Spirit. 

Two years after his unwilling visit to Canada as a 
prisoner, Israel Putnam went there again, this time with 
the araiy under the command of General Amherst. The 
French-and-Indian War was ending in victory for the 
English; Quebec had fallen, but a few other posts still 
held out, and this expedition was against Montreal. On 
the way there a French ship on Lake Ontario opposed 
the progress of the English, and a story is told of Put- 
nam's original way of overcoming this difficulty. 

" Give me some wedges, a beetle [that is, a large 
wooden hammer], and a few men of my own choice, and 
I '11 take her," he said to General Amherst. He meant 
to row under the stern of the ship and wedge her rudder 
so that she would be helpless. Whether the plan was 
carried out, we do not know, but in the morning she 



OLD WOLF PUTNAM 89 

had blown ashore and surrendered. Montreal, too, sur- 
rendered to the English, and in an Indian mission near 
there Putnam discovered the Indian who had taken him 
prisoner two years before. The chief was delighted to 
see him and entertained him in his own stone house. 

When he returned to Connecticut at the end of the 
war, he found himself a hero and a favorite with every- 
body. So many people came to see him that at last he 
turned his house into an inn, and hung out a sign on a 
tree in front of it. That sign is now in the rooms of the 
Connecticut Historical Society at Hartford. 

The next ten years, until the Revolution, he spent in 
peace on his farm. Just before that war began he drove 
a flock of sheep all the way to Boston for the people 
there who were in distress. 

" The old hero, Putnam," says a letter written from 
Boston in August, 1774, " arrived in town on Monday 
bringing with him 130 sheep from the little parish of 
Brooklyn. He cannot get away, he is so much caressed 
both by officers and citizens." 

The next spring he was ploughing in the field when 
a messenger rode by bringing the news of the battle of 
Lexington. Putnam left the plough in the fiuTow in 
the care of his young son Daniel, and without stopping 
to change his working clothes, set off at once on horse- 
back for Boston, making a record ride for a heavy man 
fifty-seven years old. 



90 ONCE UPON A TIME IN CONNECTICUT 

His popularity in Connecticut made men ready to 
enlist under him. The battle of Bunker Hill was fought 
at Boston in June, and he took part in it. " The brave 
old man," says Washington Irving, " rode about in the 
heat of the action, with a hanger belted across his 
brawny shoulders over a waistcoat without sleeves, in- 
spiriting his men by his presence, and fighting gallantly 
at the outposts to cover their retreat." 

"When "Washington arrived at Cambridge to take com- 
mand of the American army, Israel Putnam received 
from him his appointment by the Continental Congress 
as major-general. He held this rank through the rest 
of his life and fought in many campaigns of the Revo- 
lution. He was with the army in ISew York, and at the 
battle of Long Island ; he was sent by Washington to 
Philadelphia to protect that city when it was threatened 
by the British, and later, he was put in charge of the 
defenses of the Hudson Piver. 

One of his last exploits in the Revolutionary War 
was his famous ride down the stone steps at Horseneck, 
near Greenwich. The British, under General Tryon, 
invaded Connecticut in 1779, and threatened Green- 
wich, and General Putnam, who was in command there, 
after placing his men in the best position for defense, 
hurried off alone, on horseback, for Stamford, to bring 
up reinforcements. Some British dragoons, catching 
sight of him down the road, started in pursuit. Thej- 



OLD WOLF PUTNAM 91 

were better mounted than he and gained on him stead- 
ily. Putnam, looking back, saw the distance between 
them grow less and less. In a moment more they would 
overtake him ; what should he do V He was on the top 
of the hill near the Episcopal Church, there was a curve 
in the road ahead, and a precipice at the side, with some 
rough stone steps up which people sometimes climbed 
on foot on Sundays, to the church, from the lower road 
at the bottom of the hill. 

Putnam struck spurs into his horse and dashed around 
the curve at full speed. The instant he was out of sight 
he wheeled and put his horse over the precipice down 
the steep rocks. The dragoons came galloping around 
the corner and, not seeing him, stopped short in aston- 
ishment. Before they discovered him again, he was 
halfway down to the lower road. They sent a bullet 
after him which went through his beaver hat and he 
turned, waved his hand in a gay good-bye, and rode on 
to Stamford. It is said that General Tryon afterward 
sent him a suit of clothes to make up for the loss of 
his hat. 

That same year he had a stroke of paralysis which 
disabled him so that he could never again take part in 
the war. He lived at home in retirement until his death 
on May 19, 1790. Perhaps no brave deed in his life was 
quite as brave as the cheerful and resolute way he met 
this hard blow near its end. He did not die as he would 



92 ONCE UPON A TIME IN CONNECTICUT 

have liked, in the roar and thunder of battle; he was 
laid aside and the war went on without him. But after 
the first bitter disappointment, he regained his courage 
and good spirits, and no one heard him complain. Peo- 
ple gathered about him and his last days were honored 
in his own home. When the war ended in 1783, Wash- 
ington wrote him a letter which he counted as one of 
his greatest treasures. 

Any number of stories are told of " Old Put," as the 
soldiers called him, of his adventures, and his odd hu- 
mor. It is said that once " a British officer challenged 
him to fight [a duel] ; and Putnam, having the choice 
of weapons, chose that they should sit together over a 
keg of powder to which a slow match was applied. The 
officer sat till the match drew near the hole, when he 
ran for his life, Putnam calling after him that it was 
only a keg of onions with a few grains of powder 
sprinkled upon it." 

We have several descriptions of his personal appear- 
ance. He "was of medium height, of a strong, ath- 
letic figure, and in the time of the Revolutionary War 
weighed about two hundred pounds. His hair was dark, 
his eyes light blue, and his broad, good-humored face 
was marked with deep scars received in his encounters 
with French and Indians," 

•' Putnam, scored with ancient scars, 
The living record of his country's wars," 

as a poet of those days expressed it. 




Gknekai, Putnam 
A drawing from life by Joiin Trumbull 



OLD WOLF PUTNAM 93 

There were greater generals in the Revohition than 
Israel Putnam, men who, partly because they were bet- 
ter educated, were better fitted than he to plan and carry 
out large operations. But he excelled as a pioneer, as 
a bold leader, and a brave, independent fighter. As a 
well-known historian says, " He was brave and gener- 
ous, rough and ready, thought not of himself in time of 
danger, but was ready to serve in any way the good of 
the cause. His name has long been a favorite one with 
young and old; one of the talismanic names of the 
Revolution, the very mention of which is like the sound 
of a trumpet." 

REFERENCES 

1. Humphreys, Colonel David. Essay on the Life of the Hon. 
Major- General Israel Putnam. Boston, 1818. 

2. Livingston, William Garrand. Israel Putnam. Pioneer^ 
Banger., and Major- General. G. P. Putnam's Sons. New York 
and London, 1901. 

3. Tarbox, Increase N. Life of Israel Putnam ("Old Put"). 
Lockwood, Brooks & Co. Boston, 1876. 

4. Fiske, John. " Israel Putnam," in Appleton's Encydopcedia 
of American Biography, Boston, 1891. 



THE BULLET-MAKERS OF LITCHFIELD 

IN the Museum of the New York Historical Society 
there is a large flat stone with an inscription cut into 
one side of it, and in the other, three deep holes for three 
legs of a horse. Lying on a table near it are several large 
pieces of heavy metal with the old gilding almost worn 
off. One piece looks like the tail of a horse and another 
like a part of his saddle. These fragments of metal and 
the stone slab are nearly all that is left of a statue of 
King George the Third on horseback that stood on 
Bowling Green, at the lower end of Broadway in New 
York City, before the Revolutionary War. 

One evening early in the war a mob gathered on 
Bowling Green. Led by the Sons of Liberty and helped 
by some of the soldiers, the crowd tore down the king's 
statue and broke it into bits. Bonfires were blazing in 
the streets and by the light of these ropes were thrown 
over the king and his charger and both were pulled down 
and dragged through the streets. An entry in Washing- 
ton's Orderly Book at this time, forbidding his soldiers 
to take part in anything like a riot, shows that he did 
not fully approve of this proceeding. But the people 
were very much excited. It was the night of the 9th of 
July, 1776, and news of the Declaration of Independ- 



THE BULLET-MAKERS OF LITCHFIELD 95 

ence by the Continental Congress in Philadeljohia had 
just reached i^ew York that afternoon. At evening roll- 
call the Declaration was read at the head of each brigade 
of the army and " was received with loud huzzas." 

Independence was declared in Philadelphia on the 4th 
of July, and that day has been kept ever since as the 
birthday of the United States, but news traveled so 
slowly before the telegraph was invented that it was not 
known in New York until Monday, the 9th. Then bells 
rang, and as night drew on people lighted bonfires to 
show their joy, and not content with this, they hurried 
away to Bowling Green and pulled down the statue of 
the king and cut off his head. They acted at once on the 
statement of the famous Declaration which they had just 
heard read to them, that " A prince whose character is 
marked by every act that may define a tyrant is unfit to 
be the ruler of a free people." 

Once off his pedestal, however, the king suddenly be- 
came valuable and precious to them, for he, as well as 
his horse, was made mostly of lead and he could be melted 
down and run into bullets. Lead was dear and scarce, 
and bullets were needed in the army. The king's troops 
now " will probably have melted majesty fired at them," 
some one wrote in a letter to General Gates. So the 
pieces of the statue were carefully saved and most of it 
was sent away secretly by ox-cart, so it is said, up into 
the Connecticut hills to the home of General Wolcott in 



96 ONCE UPON A TIME IN CONNECTICUT 

Litchfield, for safe keeping. The general was returning 
there himself about this time from Philadelphia, and per- 
haps he took charge of its transportation. We shall hear 
of it again in Litchfield, for this story, which begins in 
!N^ew York, ends in Connecticut. 

The story should really begin in London, for the statue 
was made there. The colonists sent an order for it after 
the repeal of the Stamp Act in 1766. This act had ex- 
cited great resentment in the colonies because it was an 
attempt to tax the people without their consent. When 
it was at last repealed, they were overjoyed, and 'New 
York determined to express its renewed loyalty to the 
king by erecting a statue of him. The laws of the colony 
state that it was set up " as a monument of the deep 
sense with which the inhabitants of this colony are im- 
pressed of the blessing they enjoy under his [King 
George's] illustrious reign, as well as their great affec- 
tion for his royal person." 

The statue was of lead, dark, heavy, and dull like the 
character of the king it represented, but it was richly 
gilded outside and looked, at first, like pure gold. Some 
of the pieces in the museum still show the gildhig. It 
must have been a brilliant ornament in the little city 
when, on August 1, 1770, it was placed on Bowling 
Green, facing the Fort Gate. But it did not stand there 
very long in peace, for the stormy days of the Revolu- 
tion were approaching. England continued to impose 




miwui ^j i jufijuliiU 



Coiutes,/ o Mr. I hurhs .)/. /..y/,' 



(In- .\,ir York Histuririil Sorutij 



Kfng Geohge tiik Thikd 

A drawiiiii by j\Ir. Lefferts from descriptions and 
measurements of friiijments of the statue 



THE BULLET-MAKERS OF LITCHFIELD 97 

taxes and the colonies to resist them, until the discon- 
tent of the people broke out in many ways. More than 
one attempt was made to injure King George's statue 
before it was finally torn down on the night of July 9, 
1776. 

If we want to know what the British thought of this 
last insult to their king, we shall find out by reading 
the journal of Captain John Montresor, an oflicer in the 
British army. 

" Hearing," he writes, " that the Rebels [that is, the 
Americans] had cut the king's head off the equestrian 
statue in the centre of the Ellipps [near the Fort] at 
New York, which represented George the 3rd in the 
figure of Marcus Aurelius, and that they had cut the 
nose off, dipt the laurels that were wreathed round 
his head and drove a musket bullet part of the way 
thro' his head and otherwise disfigured it, and that it 
was carried to Moore's tavern adjoining Fort Washing- 
ton, on New York Island, in order to be fixt on a spike 
on the Truck of that Flag-staff as soon as it could be 
got ready, I immediately sent to Cox, who kept the 
tavern at King's Bridge, to steal it from thence and to 
bury it, which was effected, and was dug up on our ar- 
rival and I rewarded the men, and sent the Head by 
the Lady Gage to Lord Townshend, in order to con- 
vince them at home of the Infamous Disposition of the 
Ungrateful people of this distressed country." 



98 ONCE UPON A TIME IN CONNECTICUT 

And there, in London, a year later, Governor Hutch- 
inson, of Massachusetts, saw it at Lord Townshend's 
house in Portman Square. Lady Townshend, he said, 
went to a sofa and uncovered a large gilt head which 
her husband had received the night before from IS'ew 
York, and which, although " the nose was wounded and 
defaced," he at once recognized by its striking likeness 
to the king. We do not know what became of it after 
this, or whether it is still in existence. 

There were one or two other pieces of this monu- 
ment which also had eventful histories. The slab, on 
which the horse had stood with one foot in the air, 
was used as a gravestone for Major John Smith, of 
the Forty-second, or Royal Highland, Regiment, who 
died in 1783, and later it served for a time as a step- 
ping-stone in front of a well-known house in IS'ew 
Jersey. 

Nearly one hundred years after the Declaration of 
Independence the tail of King George's horse was dug 
up on a farm in Wilton, Connecticut, and a piece of 
his saddle was found there at about the same time. 
The tradition in AYilton is that the ox-cart carrying the 
broken statue passed through Wilton on its way to 
Litchfield, and that the saddle and the tail were thrown 
away there. Just why, no one knows; perhaps the load 
was too heavy; possibly — some people think — because 
it was found that they were not of pure lead and could 



THE BULLET-MAKERS OF LITCHFIELD 99 

not be used to make bullets. Most of the statue, how- 
ever, seems to have reached Litchfield safely. 

On the beautiful broad South Street of that village, 
high in the Connecticut hills, the house of General AYol- 
cott, afterwards Governor Wolcott, of Connecticut, still 
stands under its old trees much as it stood in the sum- 
mer of 1776. 

When the pieces of the leaden statue reached Litch- 
field, they were buried temporarily in the Wolcott or- 
chard under an ajDple tree " of the Pound variety " that 
stood near the southeast corner of the house. And then, 
sometime later, there came a day when King George, 
who had once sat so securely on his solid steed, close to 
his fort in his good city of ~Hew York, was taken out 
of this last hiding-place and, together with his leaden 
horse, was melted down and run into bullets to be fired 
at his own soldiers. 

Bullet-moulds of the time of the Revolution can be 
seen now in historical museums. Some of them are 
shaped like a large pair of shears. The work of run- 
ning the bullets that day in Litchfield was done by 
women and girls, for the men were away at the war. 
The only man who took part in it, besides the gen- 
eral himself, was Frederick, his ten-year-old son, and 
he, many years later, told how he remembered the 
event, how a shed was built in the orchard, how his 
father chopped up the fragments of the statue with a 



100 ONCE UPON A TIME IN CONNECTICUT 

wood-axe, how gay the girls were, his two sisters a lit- 
tle older than himself and their friends, and what fun 
they all had over the whole affair. A ladle, said to 
have been used in pouring the lead into the moulds, is 
still kept in the Historical Museum at Litchfield, and 
among Governor Wolcott's papers is a memorandum 
labeled, " Number of cartridges made." 





Cartridges 


Mrs. Marvin, 


6,058 


Ruth Marvin, 


11,592 


Laura, 


8,378 


Mary Ann, 


10,790 


Frederick, 


936 


Mrs. Beach, 


1,802 


Made by sundry persons, 


2,182 


Gave Litchfield militia on alarm. 


50 


Let the Regiment of Colonel Wigglesworth have, 


300 



42,088 

Mary Ann and Laura were Frederick's sisters, twelve 
and fourteen years old. Some of the bullets made, and 
which were given to the " Litchfield militia on alarm," 
were probably used the next year to repulse a British 
invasion of Connecticut, so that it was said then that 
" His Majesty's statue was returned to His Majesty's 
troops with the compliments of the men of Connect- 
icut." 



THE BULLET-MAKERS OF LITCHFIELD 101 



REFERENCES 

1. Proceedings of the New York Historical Society. October, 
1844. 

2. Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society. 2d Se- 
ries, vol. 4. 

3. Montresor, Captain John. " Journals." Collections of the New 
York Historical Society for the year 1881. Printed by the 
Society. 

4. Kilbourne, Payne Kenyon. Sketches and Chronicles of the 
Town of Litchfield^ Conn. Case, Lockwood & Co. Hartford. 
1859. 

5. Wolcott Memorial. 



NEWGATE PRIS0:N^ 

*' Attend all ye villains that live in the state, 
Consider the walls that encircle Newgate." 

NEWGATE is the name of a famous prison in Lon- 
don. It is called " Newgate " because it was first 
built, centuries ago, over a new gate in the wall of the 
city. Later, when these rooms over the gate became 
too crowded, a larger prison was built near by and 
called by the same name. 

There was once a Newgate prison in Connecticut. 
It was named for the old English one, but, instead of 
being up over a gate, it was down underground in a 
copper-mine. There was no entrance to it except by a 
shaft thirty feet deep, and the colonists chose this place 
for its security, yet the history of Newgate in Connect- 
icut is full of tales of the daring and successful escapes 
of its prisoners. 

Copper Hill, where the prison was, is in what used 
to be the town of Simsbury, but is now East Granby. 
The copper-mines there were opened early in 1700, and 
were worked for about sixty years. The copper is said 
to have been of good quality. In 1737-39, coins were 
made from it — some say by Dr. Samuel Higley who 
owned a mine near his home. These coins were never 



NEWGATE PRISON 103 

a legal tender, but were used as " token money," be- 
cause small change was scarce in the colonies. They 
are valuable to-day because they are very rare. Granby 
coppers have on one side a deer standing, and below 
him a hand, a star, and III, and around him the legend, 
" Yalue me as you please." On the other side are three 
sledgehammers with the royal crown on each hammer, 
and around them either the word " Connecticut," or the 
legend, " I am a good copper," with the date 1737. A 
third kind has one broadaxe and the legend, " I cut 
my way through." There is a specimen of each of the 
three kinds of Granby co23pers in the Connecticut State 
Library at Hartford. 

The mines were quite successful at first, but, as the 
colonists were not allowed to smelt and refine the ore 
in America, they were obliged to send it all the way to 
England, and this was very expensive. Sometimes, too, 
the ships carrying copper did not reach England at all. 
One was wrecked in the English Channel and another 
was seized by the French during a war with England. 
So in 1773, a few years before our Revolutionary War, 
the mines were given up and the largest of them was 
changed into a prison. 

At first there were no buildings at all. There was 
nothing but a hole in the ground, closed by an iron 
trapdoor that opened into the shaft, where a wooden 
ladder was fixed to the rock at one side. At the bottom 



104 ONCE UPON A TIME IN CONNECTICUT 

of the ladder there was a flight of rough stone steps 
leading farther down into the mine. All was dark and 
still except for the dripping of water along the galleries 
that led away into the heart of the hill. One cavern was 
blasted out to make more room and was fitted with 
wooden cells and bunks for the prisoners to sleep in, 
and at night a guard was set to watch the entrance up 
above and prevent any one from climbing the ladder 
and getting out. AYhen everything was ready, the com- 
mittee in charge of the work reported that it would be 
" next to impossible for any one to escape from this 
prison." 

The first prisoner sent there was a man named John 
Henson, who was committed on December 22, 1773. 
He spent eighteen days alone in the mine; then, on the 
night of January 9, 1774, he disappeared. N'o one could 
imagine how he got out. But there was another shaft 
leading up from the mine, a very deep one, where the 
copper ore had been drawn out. It had no ladder in it 
and its opening had not been closed, because it did not 
seem possible for a prisoner to escape that way. Yet a 
woman drew John Henson up eighty feet through the 
shaft in a bucket used for hoisting copper. After that, 
this shaft, too, was carefully closed and a strong wooden 
guardhouse was built over the entrance to the other 
one. 

More prisoners were soon committed to Newgate. 



NEWGATE PRISON 105 

" Burglars, horse-thieves, and counterfeiters," accord- 
ing to the law, were sent there and they were set to 
work mining copper, but instead of doing this, they dug 
their way out with the mining tools; so workshops were 
built aboveground where they made nails, boots and 
shoes, wagons, and other things. They slept in the mine 
as before, but at daylight they were called and came up 
the ladder in squads of three at a time under a guard, 
climbing as well as they could with fetters on their 
legs. They took their meals in the woi'kshops and were 
chained to the forges and workbenches until late in the 
afternoon, when they went down again into the mine 
for the night. 

When the Revolutionary War began, in 1775, politi- 
cal prisoners were sent to Newgate in Connecticut, just 
as such prisoners had often been sent to old Newgate 
in England. These men in America were the Tories, or 
Loyalists, who sympathized with the British and were 
often found giving them information and help. To pro- 
tect themselves the Americans arrested them. Some of 
the first were sent by Washington from the camp at 
Cambridge where the American army was besieging 
Boston. 

Here is a part of his letter to the Committee of Safety 
at Simsbury; its date shows that it was written several 
months before the Declaration of Independence by the 
Continental Congress in Philadelphia: — 



106 ONCE UPON A TIME IN CONNECTICUT 

Cambridge, December 7th, 1775. 

Gentlemen : 

The prisoners which will be delivered to you with this, 
having been tried by a court martial, were sentenced to 
Simsbury in Connecticut. You will therefore have them 
secured so that they cannot possibly make their escape. 
I am, etc. 

George Washington. 

But the Tories were just as anxious as any other pris- 
oners to escape if they could. Three times the wooden 
guardhouse over the entrance was set on fire and burned 
down. Once, when there were a great many Tories in 
Newgate, they made a concerted plan and carried it out 
successfully. The wife of one of them had permission 
to visit him, and came to the prison one night about ten 
o'clock. Only two guards were on duty then at the 
mouth of the shaft. When the trapdoor was lifted for 
her, the prisoners were all ready and waiting on the 
ladder. They rushed out, overpowered the two men, 
took away their muskets, and got possession of the 
guardroom. The rest of the watch, who had been asleep, 
hurried in, and there was a desperate fight; one man was 
killed and several were wounded. At last the prisoners 
succeeded in putting all the guards down into the mine 
and closing the trapdoor upon them. Then they escaped 
themselves, and few of them were ever retaken. 



NEWGATE PRISON 107 

A story is told of a Tory prisoner who, about the year 
1780, made his escape in a remarkable and unexpected 
way. There was an old drain in the mine which had once 
carried off water, but when the mine became a prison 
it was stopped up with stone and mortar, except for a 
small opening where the water still ran off between iron 
bars. The outlet of this drain was far down on the hill- 
side beyond the sight of the guards. The prisoner, 
Henry Wooster, who worked in the nail-shop, contrived 
to hide some bits of iron nail rods in his clothes and 
carry them back with him into the mine. He learned, 
with their help, to take off his fetters at night. Then, 
with the same bits of iron, he worked at the bars of the 
drain until, little by little, he loosened some of them and 
took them out so that he could crawl through into the 
drain. But the drain was too narrow in some places to 
let him pass, and he was obliged to loosen and remove 
some of its stones. This was a long and hard task, but 
he was not easily discouraged. Each night he took off 
his clothes and his fetters, crawled into the drain, and 
worked until morning. Then he replaced the iron bars, 
dressed, put on his fetters, and was ready when the 
guards came down to go up to the shops with the rest 
of the prisoners. By and by he got nearly to the end of 
the drain. Then one night, while he was down there, a 
stone, which he had accidentally loosened, fell behind 
him and blocked his way back. He could not turn to 



108 ONCE UPON A TIME IN CONNECTICUT 

reach the stone with his hands, for the drain was too 
narrow, he could not stir it with his feet, and he dared 
not cry out for help; time passed, and it was almost 
morning; he would be called and missed, and he shud- 
dered to think of the consequences. At last, as he was 
about to give up in despair, he felt the stone move just 
a little. Bracing himself against the sides of the drain, 
he pushed it vigorously with his feet. Slowly, inch by 
inch, it rolled back until it fell into a slight depression 
so that he could pass over it. Bleeding and exhausted, 
he got to his bunk and into his clothes and fetters again 
just as the guards came down the ladder. A few nights 
later he finished his work and, with several other pris- 
oners, escaped through the drain. 

Some of the Tories in I^ewgate were well-known and 
educated men. One was a clergyman named Simeon 
Baxter. He preached a sermon, one Sunday, to his com- 
panions in the mine, in which he advised them, if they 
could, to assassinate Washington and the whole Con- 
tinental Congress. This sermon was printed afterward 
in London and proves how bitter the feeling was in those 
days between the Americans and the Tories. 

After the Revolution, Newgate was the state prison 
of the State of Connecticut until 1827. N'ew workshops 
and other buildings were added from time to time as 
they were needed. The wooden guardhouse was re- 
placed by one of brick, and a strong stone room over 



NEWGATE PRISON 109 

the mouth of the shaft went by the nickname of the 
" stone jng." There was a chapel and a hospital, but the 
hospital was seldom used because there was very little 
sickness. The pure air and even temperatiu'e in the 
mine, where it was never too hot in summer nor too cold 
in winter, kept the prisoners well in spite of darkness 
and confinement, and men who were sent there in a bad 
state of health often recovered. 

At one time there was a strong wooden fence, with 
iron spikes on its top, around the enclosure, but in 1802 
it was replaced by a stone wall twelve feet high, with 
watch-towers at the corners and a moat below it. Some 
of the prisoners helped to build this wall, and when it 
was finished they were allowed to take part in a cele- 
bration. One of them, an Inshman, gave this toast at the 
feast : " May the great wall be like the wall of Jericho 
and tumble down at the sound of a ram's horn." 

But the wall is still standing on Copper Hill after 
more than one hundred years and, although the prison 
is empty and the mines deserted to-day, a great many 
people visit the place every year because of its interest- 
ing history. Guides take the visitors down the steep 
ladder in the shaft and lead them through the under- 
ground galleries where copper was mined, and show 
them the caverns where the prisoners once slept in old 
Newgate Prison. 



110 ONCE UPON A TIME IN CONNECTICUT 



REFERENCES 

1. Trumbull, J. H. (editor). Memorial History of Hartford County. 
E. L. Osgood, Boston, 1886. 

2. "Newgate of Connecticut." Magazine of American History^ 
vol. 15, April, 1886. See also vol. 10. 

3. Phelps, Richard H. Nexngate of Connecticut. American Pub- 
lishing Co. Hartford, 1876. 



THE DARK DAY 

" 'T was on a May-day of the far old year 
Seventeen hundred eighty, that there fell 
Over the bloom and sweet life of the spring, 
Over the fresh earth and the heaven of noon, 
A horror of great darkness, like the night." 

Whittier. 

YELLOW Friday," or " the Dark Day," in :N'ew 
England, was the 19th of May, 1780. For nearly 
a week before this day the air had been full of smoke 
and haze, and the sun at noontime and the full moon at 
night had looked like great red balls in the misty sky. 
Thursday night the sun went down red and threat- 
ening. 

Friday morning it rose as usual, but, as the weather 
was overcast, it only peered now and then through the 
broken gray clouds. There were mutterings of thunder 
and a few drops of rain fell, big and heavy with black 
soot. Then the shower stopped and a stillness like that 
before a great storm settled over the land. The day, 
instead of growing lighter, grew darker and darker. 
Yet no storm came. 

Strange colors edged the low-hanging clouds, red 
and brown and a brassy yellow, while the fields and 
woods below were a deep, unnatural green. The white 
roads and houses and the white church steeples turned 



112 ONCE UPON A TIME IN CONNECTICUT 

yellow. Even the clean silver in the houses looked like 
brass. These colors foreboded an eclipse of the sun ; yet 
there was no eclipse. 

By noon it was as dark as early night, and the birds 
sang their evening songs and disappeared. Some of 
the smaller ones, frightened and fluttering, flew into the 
houses or dashed themselves against the window panes. 
Chickens went to roost, the cows came home from pas- 
ture, and the frogs croaked in the ponds. 

Men planting corn in the fields stopped work because 
they could not see the corn as it dropped. Women at 
home lighted candles to find their way about the house. 
]!l^o one could see the time of day by the clocks, and 
white paper looked like black velvet. Many people were 
terrified and wondered what was coming. Some expected 
a great tornado; others said a comet was due and feared 
it portended some great calamity, perhaps a disaster to 
the armies in the field who were fighting England in 
the war of the Revolution. Still others, more ignorant 
and superstitious, were sure that the end of the world 
had come, that the last trumpet would soon sound and 
the dead be raised. One woman sent a messenger in 
haste to her pastor to ask what this dreadful darkness 
meant, but he only replied that he was " as much in the 
dark " as she. 

Several gentlemen, who happened to be at the house 
of Reverend Manasseh Cutler, the minister in Ipswich, 



THE DARK DAY 113 

Massachusetts, have left us a record of their observa- 
tions that day. 

Mr. Cutler wrote in his journal: — 

" This morning Mr. Lathrop of Boston called upon 
me. Soon after he came in I observed a remarkable cloud 
coming up and it appeared dark. The cloud was un- 
usually brassy with little or no rain. Mr. Sewell and 
Colonel Wigglesworth came in. The darkness increased 
and by eleven o'clock it was so dark as to make it 
necessary to light candles ... at half-past eleven in a 
room with three large windows, southeast and south, 
could not read a word in large print close to windows. 
. , . About twelve it lighted up a little, then grew 
more dark. ... At one o'clock very dark. . . . The 
windows being still open, a candle cast a shade so 
well defined on the wall that profiles were taken with 
as much ease as they could have been in the night. 
. . . We dined about two, the windows all open and 
two candles burning on the table. In the time of the 
greatest darkness some of the dunghill fowls went to 
roost, cocks crowed in answer to one another, wood- 
cocks, which are night birds, whistled as they do only 
in the dark, frogs peeped, in short there was the ap- 
pearance of midnight at noonday. . . . At four o'clock 
it grew more light. . . . Between three and four we 
were out and perceived a strong sooty smell. Some of 
the company were confident a chimney in the neighbor- 



114 ONCE UPON A TIME IN CONNECTICUT 

hood must be burning; others conjectured the smell was 
more like that of burnt leaves." 

These gentlemen went over to the tavern near by 
and found the people there greatly excited and tried to 
reassure them. They proved to them from the black 
ashes of leaves, which had settled like a scum on the 
rainwater standing in tubs, that the darkness was not 
supernatural, but probably came from the burning of 
forests far away. 

Dr. Ezra Stiles, who was then president of Yale Col- 
lege in 'New Haven, gave the same explanation. He 
says : — 

*' The woods about Ticonderoga [in ISTew York] and 
eastward over to New Hampshire and westward into 
New York and the Jerseys were all on fire for a week 
before this Darkness and the smoke in the wilderness 
almost to suffocation. iJ^o rain since last fall, the woods 
excessively dry. . . . Such a profusion of settlers push-»» 
ing back into the wilderness were everywhere clearing 
land and burning brush. This set the forests afire far 
beyond intention, so as to burn houses and fences. . . . 
The woods burned extensively for a week before the 
nineteenth of May and the wind all the while northerl}^" 

A quaint old ballad, said to have been written about 
that time, gives a description of this Dark Day : — 



THE DARK DAY 115 

«* The Whip-poor-will sung notes most shrill, 
Doves to their cots retreated, 
And all the fowls, excepting owls, 
Upon their roosts were seated. 

" The herds and flocks stood still as stocks, 
Or to their folds were hieing, 
Men young and old, dared not to scold 
At wives and children crying. 

" The day of doom, most thought was come, 
Throughout New England's borders, 
The people scared, felt unprepared 
To obey the dreadful orders." 

In Connecticut the legislature was in session at Hart- 
ford. It was like night in the streets of this city and 
candles were burning in the windows of all the houses. 
Men grew anxious and uneasy. As the darkness became 
deeper, the House of Representatives adjourned, finding 
it impossible to transact any business. Soon after, a sim- 
ilar motion for adjournment was made in the Senate, or 
Council, as it was then called. By this time faces could 
scarcely be distinguished across the room and a dread 
had fallen on the assembly; "men's hearts failing them 
for fear and for looking after those things which were 
coming." 

Then up rose Honorable Abraham Davenport, a judge 
of Fairfield County and councilor from Stamford, a stern 
and upright man, strict in the discharge of his duty. 

" I am against adjournment," he said. " The Day of 
Judgment is either approaching or it is not. If it is not, 



116 ONCE UPON A TIME IN CONNECTICUT 

there is no cause for adjournment; if it is, I choose to 
be found doing my duty. I wish, therefore, that candles 
may be brought." 

His strong words held the assembly. Its members 
rallied from their fears and, following his example, 
turned steadily to the transaction of the necessary busi- 
ness of the hour. 

" And there he stands in memory to this day, 
Erect, self-poised, a rugged face half seen 
Against a background of unnatural dark, 
A witness to the ages as they pass 
That simple duty hath no place for fear," 

Whittier. 

REFERENCES 

1. Barber, J. W. Connecticut historical Collections. J. W. Bar- 
ber. New Haven, 1836. 

2. "7%e JDark DayP New England Magazine^ May, 1834. 

3. Dexter, F. B. (editor). The Literary Diary of Ezra Stiles. 
Charles Scribner's Sons. New York, 1901. 

4. Cutler, W. P. and J. P. Life^ Journals^ and Correspondence of 
Bev. Manasseh Cutler. Cincinnati, 1888. 



A FRENCH CAMP IN CONNECTICUT 

ON the Green of the old town of Lebanon a mound 
is shown to-day on the spot where a large brick 
oven stood in the winter of 1781 — an oven in which 
bread was baked for the soldiers of the American Kevo- 
lutionary Army. These soldiers, who might have been 
seen almost any day that winter in their gay imiforms, 
crossing and recrossing the Green, or gathered in groups 
about the oven, were, strangely enough, not American 
soldiers, but French hussars belonging to the Duke de 
Lauzun's famous " Legion of Horse." 

France, being herself at war with England, had re- 
cently sent an army to America to help the colonies in 
their struggle against a common enemy, and the French 
commander-in-chief, the Count de Rochambeau, wrote 
from Newport, Rhode Island, to Governor Trumbull, 
of Connecticut, asking if the governor could provide 
winter quarters in Lebanon for a part of his forces — 
for the Duke de Lauzun and some of his Legion of 
Horse. 

Governor Trumbull's home was in Lebanon. His house 
was near the village Green, and close beside it stood his 
store, which, by this time, had become famous under 



118 ONCE UPON A TIME IN CONNECTICUT 

the name of the " War Office," because in this store the 
governor and the Council of Safety used to meet and 
talk over the important business of the war, and what 
Connecticut could do, as her share, to help the Ameri- 
can army. 

There is a story that Washington used to say when 
he needed more supplies, " Let us see what Brother 
Jonathan can do for us," and that this nickname, which 
is now used for the United States, belonged originally 
to Jonathan Trumbull. It is true that Washington often 
turned to him for help. He had approved the application 
of the Count de Kochambeau to Governor Trumbull for 
winter quarters for the French troops. But long before 
the arrival of these soldiers there had been busy times in 
Lebanon. Provisions of all kinds were brought from all 
over the state to the governor's store to be packed and 
sent off to the troops in the field. The governor was usu- 
ally to be found there himself, weighing and measuring, 
packing boxes and barrels, dealing out powder and lead, 
starting off trains of loaded wagons and often large herds 
of cattle to be driven all the way to the army at the front. 
Messengers came and went, flying on horseback along 
the country roads, and sometimes they sat on the coun- 
ter in the store, swinging their spurred boots, waiting 
for the governor to give them their orders. A piece of 
that counter, with the marks of their spurs in the soft 
wood, can be seen now in the rooms of the Connecticut 



A FRENCH CAMP IN CONNECTICUT 119 

Historical Society in Hartford. Although there were 
dark days during the war when the state's treasury was 
exhausted and the people discouraged and the demands 
of the army hard to meet, yet 

" Governor Trumbull never quailed 
In his store on Lebanon hill." 

Somehow or other the supplies were found and little 
Connecticut became known as the "Provision State." 
Washington spoke of her governor as " the first of 
patriots." This is one of Governor Trumbull's proclama- 
tions to the men of Connecticut: — 

" Be roused and alarmed to stand forth in our glori- 
ous cause. Join yourselves to one of the companies now 
ordered to ^ew York, or form yourselves into distinct 
companies and choose captains forthwith; . . . march 
on ; play the man for God and for the cities of our God, 
and may the God of the armies of Israel be your leader." 

Lebanon was then on one of the main roads thi-ough 
New England, and many distinguished men stopped 
there at different times to see the governor. Washing- 
ton came, and Lafayette, the young French nobleman 
whom Washington loved almost as a son, and who is, 
perhaps, " nearer to the hearts of the Americans than 
any man not of their own people." Lafayette holds this 
place in their affections because, before the French 
Government decided to send help to the colonies, he 
" came from France of his own accord and brought with 



120 ONCE UPON A TIME IN CONNECTICUT 

him the sympathy of the French people," among whom 
also new ideas of liberty were stirring. 

" From the moment I first heard of America," he said, 
"I began to love her; from the moment I understood 
that she was struggling for her liberties, I burned to 
shed my best blood in her cause." 

Lafayette's countrymen, who spent the winter of 1781 
in Lebanon, were the gallant soldiers of France. Their 
leader, the Duke de Lauzun, was a gay French noble- 
man, very handsome, very fond of good living, brilliant 
and witty as well as brave; nobody like him or his men 
had ever been seen before in Lebanon. The people of 
that quiet little town opened their eyes in surprise when 
the dashing French hussars, in their tall black caps and 
their brilliantly braided jackets, came galloping in over 
the muddy country roads. Governor Trumbull had made 
provision for them. Barracks were built for some on a 
farm which he owned just outside the town, and others 
camped on the village Green. 

With their arrival life in Lebanon changed. At day- 
break the French bugles blew the reveille. There were 
parades and reviews, there were balls and parties. 
"Washington held a review of Lauzun's Legion when 
he passed through the place one day in March. The 
corps was finely equipped. Its horses were good, its 
men brave and handsome, and their uniforms vivid and 
trim. The hussars wore sky-blue jackets braided with 




TiiK ]MAiUiUi(s OF Lafayette 

This statue was presented to France by the School Children of the 
United States 



A FRENCH CAMP IN CONNECTICUT 121 

white, yellow breeches, high boots, and tall caps with a 
white plume at the side. They made a great impression 
on the country people, who had seen their own men, 
dressed in homespun clothes, mount their rough farm- 
horses and ride away, just as they were, to the war. 
The duke himself was friendly and pleasant and popu- 
lar with his new neighbors. He lived in a house lent 
him by David Trumbull, the governor's son. 

Once, early in the winter, two distinguished visitors 
from the French army came to see him, the Marquis de 
Chastellux, who wrote a book of " Travels in ]!!^orth 
America," and the Baron de Montesquieu ; and he gave 
a dinner for them to which he invited Governor Trum- 
bull. In the marquis's book we can read a description 
of it and of Governor Trumbull as he appeared to these 
French gentlemen from the Old World. 

" On returning from the chase," says de Chastellux 
(he had been out hunting squirrels), " I dined at the 
Duke de Lauzun's with Governor Trumbull. This good 
methodical governor is seventy years old. His whole 
life is consecrated to business, which he passionately 
loves, whether it is important or not. He has all the 
simplicity and pedantry of a great magistrate of a small 
republic, and invariably says he will consider, that he 
must refer to his council. He wears the antique dress 
of the first settlers in this colony." Then the marquis 
goes on to tell how the small old man, in his single- 



122 ONCE UPON A TIME IN CONNECTICUT 

breasted, drab-colored coat, tight knee-breeches, and 
muslin wrist-ruffles, walked up to the table where twenty 
hussar officers were waiting and with " formal stiffness 
pronounced in a loud voice a long prayer in the form 
of a Benedicite." The French officers must have been 
surprised; they were not used to simple country man- 
ners and to grace before meat on all occasions, but they 
were too polite and too well trained to laugh. " Twenty 
amens issued at once from the midst of forty mous- 
taches," says the marquis, and in spite of the fun he 
makes of the old Puritan governor's stiff manners, we 
feel in reading the story that he fully appreciates his 
sterling good qualities. 

Some of these pleasure-loving French gentlemen met 
a strange and sad fate, years later, in the terrible days 
of the French Revolution. The Duke de Lauzun was 
beheaded in Paris in 1793, his long and adventurous 
life " ended with a little spurt of blood under the knife 
of the guillotine"; and Lafayette spent five years in an 
Austrian prison. 

There is another story of old Lebanon which is con- 
nected with the visit of the French soldiers. The French 
commander-in-chief, the Count de Pochambeau, had 
given to Madam Faith Trumbull, the governor's wife, 
a beautiful scarlet cloak, and one Sabbath day she ap- 
peared in the governor's pew in the Lebanon meeting- 
house wearing the French general's handsome gift. Now, 



A FRENCH CAMP IN CONNECTICUT 123 

in those hard times contributions for the army were often 
collected after service on Sundays, and the people not 
only gave money, but whatever else they could spare, 
Indian corn, flax, wood, shoes and stockings, hats and 
coats. Quietly the governor's wife rose in her seat and, 
taking the scarlet cloak from her shoulders, carried it 
down to the front and laid it with the other gifts. Later, 
it was cut into narrow bands and used to make red 
stripes on the soldiers' uniforms. 

All that is left of those stirring times in Lebanon to- 
day is the little "War Office," — restored and kept as 
a memorial of the Revolution, — and the mound on the 
Green where the brick oven stood in which bread was 
baked for the French soldiers who fought for American 
independence. 

REFERENCES 

1. Stuart, I. W. Life of Jonathan Trximhull. Crocker & Brewster. 
Boston, 1859. 

2. The Lebanon War Office. Published by the Connecticut So- 
ciety of the Sons of the Revolution. Hartford, 1891. 

3. Lodge, Henry Cabot. "Address at the Unveiling of the Statue 
of the Count de Rochambeau," in A Fighting Frigate and 
other Essays. D. Appleton & Co. New York, 1902. 

4. Chastellux, Marquis de. Travels in North America. London, 
1787. 



NATHAIN^ HALE 

" To drum-beat and heartrbeat 
A soldier marches by ; 
There is color in his cheek, 
There is courage in his eye, 
Yet to drum-beat and heart-beat 
In a moment he must die." 

THE story of IS'athan Hale is the story of a short life 
and a brave death. Connecticut has written his 
name on her Roll of Honor — the name of a man who 
was executed as a spy in the War of the Revolution. 

He was born in Coventry, Tolland County, on the 
6th of June, 1755. His father, Deacon Richard Hale, 
who, as well as his mother, Elizabeth Strong, was de- 
scended from the earliest settlers of Massachusetts, had 
moved to Coventry, Connecticut, and had bought a large 
farm there. The children were brought up strictly, as 
they were in all New England families in those days, 
and no doubt there was plenty of hard work for them 
on the farm, but, as there were ten or twelve of them, 
we may be sure there was plenty of play, too. 

It is said that Nathan was not a strong child at first, 
but grew vigorous with outdoor life ; that " he was fond 
of running, leaping, wrestling, firing at a mark, throw- 
ing, lifting, playing ball," and used to tell the girls of 
Coventry he could do anything but spin. Stories told of 



NATHAN HALE 125 

him say that when he was older he could " put a hand 
on a fence as high as his head and clear it easily at a 
bound"; and that the marks of " a leap which he made 
upon the Green in 'New Haven were long preserved 
and pointed out." One of his comrades in the army 
wrote of him, " His bodily agility was remarkable. I 
have seen him follow a football and kick it over the 
tops of the trees in the Bowery at l!^ew York (an ex- 
ercise which he was fond of)." 

But he was fond of study, as well as of play, and he 
must have done well at the Coventry School, for his 
parents determined to send him to college. He was 
fitted for Yale by the minister in Coventry, as there 
were then no preparatory schools such as we have now. 
When he was fourteen he entered Yale College at 
New Haven with his brother Enoch, who was a year 
and a half older than he. They were known in college 
as Hale Primus and Hale Secundus. 

At Yale Nathan studied well and took a good stand. 
He became, too, one of the most popular men in his 
class. He made many friends, and their letters to him 
show us how much they loved and admired him. At one 
time he was president, or " chancellor " as it was called, 
of the Linonia Debating Society; at another he was its 
secretary, or " scribe," and the minutes which he kept 
then can be seen now, m his own handwriting, in the 
Yale Library. 



126 ONCE UPON A TIME IN CONNECTICUT 

He was nearly six feet tall, broad-shouldered, with 
blue eyes and brown hair, a pleasant voice, and a man- 
ner that was both attractive and dignified. A gentleman 
in ]^ew Haven who knew him well said of him, " That 
man is a diamond of the first water and calculated to 
excel in any station he assumes." 

After he graduated in 1773, he taught school for a 
few months in East Haddam. The country schools were 
very simple in those days. There were few books ; a 
Psalter and a spelling-book were the most important 
ones used. There were no blackboards, and the teacher 
set " copies " on paper, and read out the " sums " in 
arithmetic, and often the whole school studied aloud. 
• One of Nathan Hale's pupils in East Haddam, who lived 
to be an old lady, said of him as a teacher, " Everybody 
loved him, he was so sprightly, inteUigent, and kind, 
and withal so handsome." 

He was soon offered a better position in 'New Lon- 
don as the master of a new school in which he was ex- 
pected to teach Latin as well as English. He wrote in 
one of his letters from New London : — 

" I am hapjjily situated here. I love my employment 
and find many friends among strangers. I have a school 
of thirty-two boys, half Latin, the rest English. In ad- 
dition to this I have kept, during the summer, a morn- 
ing school, between the hours of five and seven, of about 
twenty young ladies."^ 



NATHAN HALE 127 

The schoolhonses in East Haddam and New London 
where Nathan Hale taught have been restored and are 
kept now as memorials of him. 

While he was teaching in New London the war with 
England broke out. There was great excitement when 
the news came of the battle of Lexington (April 19, 
1775), and a public meeting was held at which he is re- 
ported to have said, "Let us march immediately and 
never lay down our arms until we obtain our independ- 
ence." He could not march immediately himself, for he 
was teaching school, but when summer came he entered 
the army as a lieutenant, and was soon made a captain. 
In September he went with some of the Connecticut 
troops to join Washington's army which was besieging 
Boston. The American flag was not adopted until the 
next year, and as the colors appointed for his regi- 
ment, the Seventh Connecticut, were blue, they marched 
away from New London under a blue banner. His 
camp-basket, a powder-horn made by him, and his 
army diary are still in existence, and can be seen in 
the rooms of the Connecticut Historical Society in 
Hartford. O 

Here are some of the entries in his diary that fall and 
winter : — 

" Friday 29th (Sept.) — Marched for Cambridge. 
Arrived 3 o'clock, and encamped on the foot of Winter 
Hill. 



128 ONCE UPON A TIME IN CONNECTICUT 

" Sat. 30th — Considerable firing upon Roxbury side 
in the forenoon. 

" October 9th, Monday — Morning clear and pleasant 
but cold. Exercised men 5 o'clock, one hour. 

" Sabbath, 22d — Mounted picket guard. Had charge 
of the advance picket. 

"Monday 6th (November) — It is of the utmost im- 
portance that an officer should be anxious [to know his 
duty, but of greater that he should carefully perform 
what he does know. 

" Tuesday, 7th — Left picket 10 o'clock. . . . Rain 
pretty hard most of the day. Studied the best method of 
forming a regiment for a review, manner of arranging 
the companies, also of marching round the reviewing 
officer. 

" A man ought never to lose a moment's time. If he 
put off a thing from one minute to the next his reluc- 
tance is but increased. 

" Wednesday, 8th — Cleaned my gun, played some 
football and some checkers. 

"22d, Friday — Some shot from the enemy. 

" Feb. 14, 1776, Wednesday — Last night a party of 
Regulars made an attempt iipon Dorchester. . . . The 
Guard house was set on fire but extinguished." 

During this time many of the soldiers became dis- 
couraged with the hard work and poor food and pay, 
and we learn from his diary that Captain Hale offered 



NATHAN HALE 129 

to give the men in his company his own pay if they 
would stay on for a month longer. The diary and all his 
letters are full of courage and hopefulness. 

In March, the British army, which had been shut up 
so long in Boston unable to get away by land, took 
ship and sailed for Halifax. Washington believed the 
next point of attack would be New York and he moved 
his army there to protect the city. So Hale's regiment 
marched back to 'New London and embarked in trans- 
ports for New York. The last six months of his short 
life were passed in and near New York. 

The spring was spent in fortifying the city, and in 
June Captain Hale wrote to his brother Enoch, " The 
army is every day improving in discipline and it is hoped 
will soon be strong enough to meet the enemy at any 
kind of play. My company, which was small at first, is 
increased to eighty, and a sergeant is recruiting, who 
I hope has got the other ten which completes the com- 
pany." 

When the Declaration of Independence was pro- 
claimed, the soldiers received the news with great en- 
thusiasm, and felt that they had at last an independent 
country of their own to fight for and, if need be, to die 
for. 

The British army arrived and encamped on Staten 
Island. It was a finely equipped force of twenty-five 
thousand men with a fleet of ships to support it, and 



130 ONCE UPON A TIME IN CONNECTICUT 

was in every respect better and stronger than the half- 
trained militia that made up most of the American army. 
The battle of Long Island, late in the summer, ended in 
a defeat for the Americans, and Washington's skillful 
retreat at night across the East Kiver from Long Island 
to New York was all that prevented a greater disaster. 
Many of the men in Captain Hale's company had been 
recruited along the Connecticut shores, and there is no 
doubt that these sailors under his command were very 
useful that night in getting the troops safely back to 
New York. 

After this the condition of things became very seri- 
ous, for the British had got possession of Brooklyn 
Heights, which commanded the city over East River, 
and they might cross at any time and attack it. Wash- 
ington ordered companies of rangers, or scouts, to be 
formed to keep a sharp watch on the enemy's move- 
ments, and Captain Hale accepted an appointment in 
this body of picked men. It was commanded by Colonel 
Knowlton, who was also a Connecticut man and had 
been a ranger himself in the old French-and-Indian 
War. He was a brave officer, and when he lay dying 
in the battle of Harlem Heights he said, " I do not value 
my life if we do but get the day." Captain Hale must 
have been glad to serve under such a leader. 

Meanwhile, Washington had moved the greater part 
of his army outside New York to avoid being shut up 



NATHAN HALE 131 

in the city as the British had been in Boston, and was 
anxiously expecting an attack. But none came, and his 
susjjense grew greater and greater as time passed and he 
got no information as to what would happen. " Every- 
thing depends on obtaining intelligence of the enemy's 
motions," he wrote to his officers, " I was never more 
uneasy than on account of my want of knowledge," and 
he begged them to send some one into the enemy's 
camp in disguise to find out what their plans were, and 
when and where they would attack. 

It was not easy to get any one to go, for it meant be- 
ing a spy. Spies are necessary in all wars because the 
commanding general must have information about the 
enemy's movements. But soldiers hate a spy, who comes 
into their camp as a friend when he is really an enemy, 
and honorable men do not like to do this. It is usually 
done by men who care most of all for the money it 
brings. The service, too, is so dangerous that the gen- 
eral may not command it, he may only accept it when 
it is volunteered. If a spy is caught within the enemy's 
( lines no mercy is shown him ; his trial is swift and his 
> death certain; in those days the penalty was hanging. 
This time a man of intelligence was needed and 
Colonel Knowlton explained the matter to some of his 
officers. One of them is said to have replied: "I am 
willing to be shot, but not to be hung." But there was 
another who looked at it differently, and this was Cap- 



132 ONCE UPON A TIME IN CONNECTICUT 

tain Nathan Hale. It seemed to him that if his country 
called it was his duty to go, at the sacrifice, if neces- 
sary, of both his honor and his life. And the more he 
thought of it the more sure he was that it is the motive 
with which a deed is done that makes it good or evil, 
and that a service which his country demanded could 
not be dishonorable. 

He asked advice from his friends, especially from 
Captain William Hull, of his old regiment, w^ho had 
also been one of his fellow students at college. Captain 
Hull urged him strongly not to do it. He reminded him 
how men feel about a spy and told him, too, that it was 
doubtful if, with his frank, open character, he could 
ever succeed in deceiving people and pretending to be 
what he was not. He begged him for the sake of his 
family and his friends to give it up because it might end 
for him in a disgraceful death. 

Captain Hale replied, " I am fully sensible of the con- 
sequences of discovery and capture in such a situation. 
But for a year I have been in the army and have not 
rendered any material service while receiving a com- 
pensation for which I make no return. Yet I am not 
influenced by the hope of promotion or reward. I wish 
to be useful, and every kind of service necessary to the 
public good becomes honorable by being necessary. 
But," he added, taking his friend's hand affectionately, 
" I will reflect, and do nothing but what duty demands." 



NATHAN HALE 133 

He decided to go, and left the American camp the 
second week in September. He was to cross to Long 
Island and approach the British position from the rear, 
and he was to go as a schoolmaster looking for employ- 
ment, which was the best disguise he could assume as 
he had once been a schoolmaster and might easily pass 
for one again. Just what his orders and instructions 
were we do not know, as the service was a secret one. 

His faithful sergeant, Stephen Hempstead, of New 
London, went with him part of the way. On account 
of British ships cruising in the East River and in the 
Soimd, they were obliged to go as far as N^orwalk, Con- 
necticut, before it was safe to cross. Hempstead tells 
us that at IsTorwalk Captain Hale changed his uniform 
for a plain suit of citizen's brown clothes, with a round, 
broad-brimmed hat, took off his silver shoe-buckles, and 
left all his papers behind except his college diploma, 
which he thought might be useful. Then he said good- 
bye to Hempstead, telling him to wait for him there, 
and an armed sloop commanded by Captain Pond — 
probably Charles Pond, of Milford, a fellow officer in 
Hale's regiment — carried him over to Hmitington on 
Long Island. 

Hempstead waited, but Ca})tain Hale never returned. 
The next news his friends received was the news of his 
capture and execution as a spy in the British camp. 
^ We shall probably never know just what happened 



134 ONCE UPON A TIME IN CONNECTICUT 

after he left Huntington, what adventures he met with 
or what narrow escapes he had. About the time that he 
crossed the Sound, Sir William Howe, the British gen- 
eral, moved over to New York and took possession of 
the city, and Washington's suspense ended. Perhaps 
Captain Hale did not learn of this until it was too late 
to return, or, perhaps, knowing it, he chose to go on 
and finish the work he had begun and take back infor- 
mation of the new position of the enemy. 

We know that he passed safely all through the Brit- 
ish camps, both on Long Island and in New York, that 
he did his work thoroughly and well, made plans and 
drawings of the new fortifications in the city, and was 
only arrested on the last night, when the work was done 
and he was ready to return. Just where he was when 
he was captured we do not know. From the new hue 
of intrenchments made by the British across the city 
he could have looked northward over to the American 
camp on Harlem Heights, scarcely a mile away, and 
could almost have seen the tents of his own company 
of rangers. Perhaps he made a quick dash for freedom 
across this short mile and was seized then. Or, perhaps, 
in the excitement of a great fire which raged all through 
the lower part of 'New York City on that day, he may 
have got safely back to Long Island and have been ar- 
rested as he tried to pass the sentries on the outposts. 
An old tradition says that he had gone as far as Hunt- 



NATHAN HALE 135 

ington and was taken there. We cannot tell. But just 
as the difficult task was over, the sudden disappoint- 
ment came. 

The papers and drawings found on him told the story 
only too plainly, and he was carried before Sir William 
Howe. When he was questioned he at once gave his 
name, his rank in the American army, and his reasons 
for coming inside the British lines. No trial was neces- 
sary, and General Howe immediately signed the war- 
rant for his execution on the next morning, Sunday, 
September 22, at eleven o'clock. 

He was handed over to the provost marshal, William 
Cunningham, a coarse and brutal man who has left a 
shocking record of cruelty to his prisoners. Hale asked 
if he might have a minister with him, but Cunningham 
refused. Then he asked for a Bible, but that, too, was 
forbidden. How he spent the night we cannot tell; part 
of it, no doubt, in prayer, for that was the habit of his life. 

He could not want to die. He was young and strong, 
just twenty-one, hardly more than a boy, and life was 
all before him. He had friends who loved him; he was 
engaged to be married; he had every prospect of suc- 
cess and happiness. But he had deliberately counted 
the cost before he undertook the dangerous service, and 
the training of all his life, at home, at college, and in the 
army, had taught him not only to do and to dare, but, 
what is better still, to accept defeat bravely. 



136 ONCE UPON A TIME IN CONNECTICUT 

The next morning, while the last fatal preparations 
were being made, an aide-de-camp of General Howe's, 
a brave officer of Engineers who was stationed near the 
place, asked that the prisoner be allowed to wait in his 
tent. "Captain Hale entered," he says; "he was calm 
and bore himself with gentle dignity in the conscious- 
ness of rectitude and high intentions. He asked for 
writing materials, which I furnished him ; he wrote two 
letters, one to his mother, and one to a brother officer." 

These letters Cunningham destroyed, saying that 
"the rebels should never know they had a man who 
could die with so much firmness." 

There were few people present at his death. "When 
he reached the foot of the tree where the sentence was 
to be executed, he was asked if he had anything to say, 
any confession to make. He told again who he was and 
why he came, and added quietly, " I only regret that I 
have but one life to lose for my country." Then the 
noose was adjusted, and the cruel end came quickly. 

These last words of Nathan Hale have been repeated 
again and again since that time. They have been cut in 
bronze and in marble, they have been taught in our 
schools. They are noble words, because they are simple 
and brave and unselfish. He could have had no idea that 
they would ever be heard beyond the little group of 
people about him when he died, but it so happened that 
General Howe had occasion to send a letter to Wash- 




CniirliKii lit Mr. (iiunji- I). Sui/iiwur 

Nathan Hale 
This statue stands in front of old Connecticut Hall. Yale 
University. Nathan Hale's room was in this building 



NATHAN HALE 137 

ington late that evening about an exchange of prison- 
ers, and the bearer of the letter was Captain Montresor, 
the officer in whose tent ISTathan Hale had spent the last 
hour of his Hfe. Inside the American lines Montresor 
met Captain Hull, Hale's intimate friend, the man who 
had warned Hale so earnestly of the fate that might be 
his. To him Montresor told the tragic story of that 
morning and repeated the words that have since become 
famous. 

Years afterward a monument was put up in Coventry 
to the memory of Captain Kathan Hale. There are 
several statues of him in different places; there is a 
fountain with his name upon it in Norwalk where he 
crossed the Sound, and another at Huntington, Long 
Island ; there is an old fort named for him on the shore 
of New Haven Harbor; but the memorial which comes 
closest to our hearts is the little stone in the old Coven- 
try graveyard, set there in memory of him by his own 
family. This is the inscription cut into it : — 

" Durable stone preserve the monumental record. 
Nathan Hale, Esq., a Capt. in the army of the 
United States, who was born June 6th, 1755, 
and received the first honors of Yale College, 
Sept., 1773, resigned his life a sacrifice to his 
Country's liberty at New York, Sept. 22d, 
1776. Etatis22d." 



138 ONCE UPON A TIME IN CONNECTICUT 

CAPTURE AND DEATH OF NATHAN HALE 

By an unknown poet of 1776 

The breezes went steadily thro' the tall pines, 
A-saying " oh, hu-sh ! " a-saying " oh, hu-sh I " 
As stilly stole by a bold legion of horse, 
For Hale in the bush ; for Hale in the bush. 

" Keep still 1 " said the thrush as she nestled her young, r 
In a nest by the road ; in a nest by the road ; 

" For the tyrants are near, and with them appear, 
What bodes us no good ; what bodes us no good." 

The brave captain heard it, and thought of his home, 
In a cot by the brook ; in a cot by the brook. 
With mother and sister and memories dear, 
He so gayly forsook ; he so gayly forsook. 

Cooling shades of the night were coming apace, 
The tattoo had beat ; the tattoo had beat 
The noble one sprang from his dark hiding-place. 
To make his retreat ; to make his retreat. 

He warily trod on the dry rustling leaves. 

As he pass'd thro' the wood ; as he pass'd thro' the wood ; 

And silently gain'd his rude launch on the shore, 

As she play'd with the flood ; as she play'd with the flood. 

The guard of the camp, on that dark, dreary night, 
Had a murderous will ; had a murderous will. 
They took him and bore him afar from the shore, 
To a hut on the hill ; to a hut on the hill. 

No mother was there, nor a friend who could cheer, 
In that little stone cell ; in that little stone cell. 
But he trusted in love, from his father above. 
In his heart all was well ; in his heart all was well. 



NATHAN HALE 139 

An ominous owl with his solemn bass voice, 

Sat moaning hard by ; sat moaning hard by. 

" The tyrant's proud minions most gladly rejoice, 

For he must soon die ; for he must soon die." 

The brave fellow told them, no thing he restrain'd, 
The cruel gen'ral ; the cruel gen'ral ; 
His errand from camp, of the ends to be gain'd, 
And said that was all ; and said that was all. 

They took him and bound him and bore him away, 
Down the hill's grassy side ; down the hill's grassy sidOt 
'T was there the base hirelings in royal array, 
His cause did deride ; his cause did deride. 

Five minutes were given, short moments, no more, 
For him to repent ; for him to repent ; 
He pray'd for his mother, he ask'd not another; 
To Heaven he went ; to Heaven he went. 

The faith of a martyr, the tragedy shew'd, 
As he trod the last stage ; as he trod the last stage. 
And Britons will shudder at gallant Hale's blood, 
As his words do presage ; as his words do presage. 

** Thou pale king of terrors, thou life's gloomy foe, 
Go frighten the slave ; go frighten the slave ; 
Tell tyrants, to you, their allegiance they owe. 
No feaxs for the brave ; no fears iox the brave.". 



o 



140 ONCE UPON A TIME IN CONNECTICUT 



REFERENCES 

1. Johnston, Henry Phelps. Nathan Hale^ 1776 — Biography 
and Memorials. Yale University Press. New Haven, 1914. 

2. Stuart, I. W. Life of Captain Nathan Hale., the Martyr Spy 
of the American Mevolution. F. A. Brown. Hartford, 1856. 

3. Hull, General William. Military and Civil Life. D. Appleton 
&Co. New York, 1848. 

4. Hale, Enoch. Diary. (In Appendix to an address delivered 
at Groton, Connecticut, September 7, 1881, by E. E. Hale.) 

5. Hempstead, Stephen. "Recollections." Missouri Republican^ 
January 18., 1827. 

6. Bostwick, Elisha. Pension Papers, in Hartford CouraiU^ De- 
cember 15, 1914. 



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